Digitalis.

Foxgloves are flowers which I associate with my childhood, when our family made an annual pilgrimage - 300 miles each way - sometimes by train, sometimes by car, followed by a boat-crossing, to spend the Summer holidays on the island where our grandparents lived.

I preferred the train journeys, looking out at the ever-changing panorama of wild flowers - the most striking of which was the foxglove - growing along the embankments, whereas our car seemed to crawl along at a snail’s pace, often with only large tracts of moorland for miles on end, and little of interest to break the boredom of the journey, barring the beauty of those striking flowers.

The tall, elegant spires – in shades of white, pink and deep purple - grew in profusion along bankings, in deciduous woodland areas and under tall fir trees. Their fascination stayed with me and I have been growing them for many years now. In one of the early years here, before we had lots of established perennials, our garden was awash with a mixture of single foxgloves and the taller, double-headed hybrids.