• In the Garden

Monday, November 17, 2008

The garden thief

posted by Terry OShaughnessy at 23h31

Here is what they won’t teach you in any gardening book: now is the time to steal hollyhock seeds from neighbours and perfect strangers so that you will be able to recreate this Victorian beauty in your own yard next summer.

I’m lucky enough to live in an older village where vintage flowers are everywhere to be found – and the hollyhock is one of the ones I covet the most. Growing taller than I am, it flowers throughout the late summer with bloom after bloom on its tall stems.

Just over the road and around the corner, on a very old street in Hudson that shall remain nameless, someone has a truly beautiful hollyhock patch. Pink and a bit unusually, yellow, single hollyhocks bloomed for most of August this year, and I enjoyed walking past them with my dogs almost every day. I was struck with the idea that I could steal a few seed heads off of the plants. Who would know, I wondered? Or…care?

Some years ago when I was living in England, I read in the newspaper about two people who had been arrested for stealing bluebells in the woods. They reportedly said, “We were not able to stop ourselves.” I understand this completely.

For some reason, thievery and gardening seem to go hand in hand. Perhaps gardeners are popularly seen to be unexciting, drowsy sort of people, but I assure you that this is not the case. Check any gardener’s car and you will find garbage bags, gloves, and a trowel hiding in the trunk, just waiting for trouble.

So with my dogs as accomplices, I made it look like I was just "picking up" after one of them, and I sprang into action. Like lightning I whipped at least seven hollyhock seed heads into my pocket from the venerable garden in Hudson — a pretty good haul. The dogs had put on their most perfect poker faces, and our getaway was clean. Walking home, I didn’t even feel guilty.