“It isn’t that I don’t like sweet disorder, but it has to be judiciously arranged.”—Vita Sackville-West
In the frenzy of planting in late May, I put things in the ground wherever there is an empty space. I’m not a planner. My garden evolves in a spontaneous fashion without much forethought. It makes for a sweet disorder which pleases me and leads to unexpected combinations of plants. It was in this mode that the Dahlia ‘Bishop of LLandaff’ ended up side by side with Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’. I had no blasphemous intentions. Although you might think that a bishop would object to such close proximity with Lucifer, they compliment each other very well. Reds, oranges, and yellows against dark foliage are stunning.
Dahlias are tuberous plants native to Central America. The Spanish conquistadors brought the roots back to Spain thinking that they could be an important food source like the potato that they also imported from South America. Though they are edible, the dahlia tubers were valued more for the flowers they produced and over the years cultivars were developed with earlier and showier blooms. In our climate dahlias are not hardy through the winter. Tubers must be dug up and stored in a cool, but above freezing, environment and then replanted every year.
The cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul was founded in the Welsh village of LLandaff by Celtic Christians; became Roman Catholic; then Church of England; and finally Church of Wales; and is headed by the Bishop of LLandaff. A dahlia developed by Fred Treseder was chosen by Bishop Joshua Pritchard Hughes to honor his position, was given the cultivar name ‘Bishop of LLandaff’, and went on to win the Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit in 1928.
The Bishop, as he is known, is a mid-sized plant with striking dark, almost black, delicate foliage and is topped with single blooms of blood red petals surrounding a golden central boss. In recent years a group of cultivars, christened the ‘Bishop’s Children’, has been developed with similar foliage and flowers in shades of pink, yellow, and orange. It seems that seed planted in the spring will produce flowers the first year. I was a bit taken aback with the idea of the Bishop producing children, but since it is no longer a Roman Catholic Church, the Bishop isn’t restrained by vows of chastity.
“Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste…
Just call me Lucifer…”—Mick Jagger/Keith Richards
The genus Crocosmia is a group of plants produced from corms, native to the grasslands of South Africa. ‘Lucifer’ is a cultivar whose strappy leaves emerge from the ground first. Then, in July, a gracefully curved wand of a flower stalk appears with a double row of brilliant red-orange florets. As the blooms drop handsome seed pods, like a double row of buttons, takes their place. It is a stupendous presence in mid-summer. ‘Lucifer’ was developed in England in the 1960s by the aptly named Alan Bloom. New selections from the United Kingdom includes ‘Hellfire’, a plant that Far Reaches Farm claims must be “Lucifer’s love child” with “stout dark sooty stems holding deep burning red fingers.”
My ‘Bishop’ and my ‘Lucifer’ are such a good pair. I realize their monikers are only human constructs and there is no religious tension in this corner of my garden. But I enjoy a bit of sacrilegious humor and smile on the two as I putter in the garden. Meanwhile the plants grow, look beautiful together, provide nectar for pollinators, and get on with it all oblivious to my foolishness.
“Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky.—John Lennon
September 2022