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Anyone having a wander around our garden could not fail to notice a preponderance of wild flowers, many of them having been sown as annuals over the past sixteen years.
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A great number have now become established among the perennial plants and flowers.
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This has the effect of transforming parts of the garden into a wild meadow.
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As a consequence, butterflies, insects and bees adore visiting these nectar borders, which, in due course, provide insects for the birds.
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In our ponds the wild flowers bring insects which are eaten by the adult frogs, toads and newts.
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Many gardeners regard the wild flowers as weeds, and pull them up, as they interfere with their preferred choice of plants, but I love the natural look, which suits our wild, cottage garden.
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Growing as ours do, cheek by jowl, amongst the cultivated ones, they attract the eye, for a variety of reasons.
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Sometimes they seem to burst into colour with acclamations of joy.
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These are the ones which reflect the rich reds, warm yellows and vibrant oranges of the spectrum.
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But, more often, than not, they reflect the cooler, pastel shades of mauves, blues and violets.
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These ones sing from a different hymn sheet…soothing lullabies on cooler summer days.
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They are all part of indelible childhood memories of walks in the countryside,
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and along the shores of the islands where my parents were born
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and where we spent our summer holidays.
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As a child, I recognised wild flowers solely by their common names.
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Not until the end of term one year, at my Grammar School,
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when I chose a wild flower book as a prize,
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did I really begin to pay attention to their botanical names.
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Even then, it was only as an adult that I learned about the life of the Swedish botanist, Carl Linnaeus,
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the originator of the classification system of plants,
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who laid down the foundation for modern botany.
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When I studied French and German at Secondary School,
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more emphasis was given to learning the grammar,
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and less time speaking the languages.
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As a result, I am more at ease listening to,
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rather than initiating, conversations in those languages.
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However, one year we invited a German family to come and stay as our guests for a week during the summer holidays,
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as part of the Twin-Town Link at our sons’ High School.
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The father was a botanist, so in our garden,
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he and I had amazing conversations about the plants,
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thanks to the work of Carl Linnaeus.
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At that stage in his life, our younger son was already fluent in German.
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He was, therefore, utterly amazed that there was a wealth of German vocabulary I knew, of which he was unaware…
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until I explained that we were speaking in the common language of flowers.
(If you click on each photograph, you will find its common name, followed by its botanical name . This will be easier than scrolling up and down the page to identify the flowers in each of the 34 photos.)