"ADD colour to your autumn" the sign proclaimed cheerily in the garden centre. Beneath it in serried rows stood the brightest and most colourful soldiers ready to challenge all comers There were no nonsensical wishy-washy colours there, no pastel stuff seeking to blend and to complement its neighbours. There were no apologies but a very solid determination on colour and order. While virtually all other garden plants had given way to a lax and easy attitude, reclining, leaning bending and weaving in tune with the mellow fullness of the season, the lines of chrysanthemums would have none of it and seeming to denigrate and deny both nature and life, they presented a static listless picture. In spite of the efforts of the plant breeders and their ever so jolly colour range the plants spoke of dull contrivance and cunning artifice.
This was the latest offering in hybrid chrysanthemums and they have been on challenging show in garden centres and shops for weeks past. I can imagine nothing more incongruous than these dumpy mounds of strong yellow, vivid pink, deep wines and bronze as well as violets and purples in the garden or near anything that is live and relates to nature.
There are chrysanthemums and there are chrysanthemums. At least there were once, before the taxonomists got at them, and although this business of segregating has been comforting if very confusing it has caused the disowning of all the nicer flowers which once paraded under the wide chrysanthemum umbrella.
Now the family has been much Slimmed down and we can look at them with justified suspicion without questioning our liking for pyrethrums, Paris Daisies, fever-few, ox-eye daisies and Shasta daisies. All the summer flowering stuff which is so garden-worthy passes under new names - or should if we move with the times
When the autumn and winter flowering chrysanths arrived 200 years ago from China they already had a most impressive history, having been cultivated for over 2,000 years. During the 19th century various others arrived from Japan and intensive breeding resulted in the introduction of all sorts of flowers. The whole thing had moved a very long way from the blooms which had been painted on oriental porcelain.
There were a number of positive features which endeared these plants to people. They bloomed as days grew shorter and so prolonged flower colour in the garden. They grew very happily in pots under glass and so could be coaxed well into winter, sheltered from rain, winds and frost. And then, most importantly, they were ideal cut flowers, lasting for weeks after cutting. They were the next best thing to artificial flowers and almost as charming. So they were bred and made popular by the trade not because of any beauty but for purely financial reasons.
As cut flowers they are easy to arrange, having useful strong stems with rigid blooms held above and they were ideal for those who wanted long-lasting static arrangements. So they had it made and the growers obligingly saw to it that they were available all the year round. Any day of the year - Christmas Eve, Mother's Day, Midsummer's Day - we would always have nice, safe, reliable and colourful flowers. For a christening, a wedding, a party or a funeral you could always rely on chrysanthemums.
That was how it was, that is how it is still in some places. They did not speak of gardens of the outdoors or wilful nature? no, they are the complete antithesis of all that and could never speak to the soul because they are utterly soulless and belong instead to a purely commercial fringe of the flower world.
Not being given easily to prejudice I set out to like chrysanthemums. Having acquired a job lot of them at an auction, part of the contents of a greenhouse at a country house sale, I determined to get to know and like them.
THAT was 20 years ago and I thought that a nice array of flowers in pink, yellow and white in the greenhouse would enliven the winter months. There were dozens and dozens of them in lovely old terracotta pots. I did all the right things, divided them in early spring, increased the desirable ones further by rooting cuttings on the plate rack of the kitchen stove, stood them out in summer, watered and staked attentively and admired them in autumn and winter.
It went on for a few years and the great double flowers with incurving petals looked back at me on winter nights by the light of a weak bulb. It was a morbid and unhealthy fascination and I put a stop to it.
Now I can contentedly dislike them or at least dislike most of what I see. There are a few worthy garden plants, pleasingly single-flowered such as the Emperor of China or Clara Curtis. which lend enhancement in October and into November in shades of pink and which I would not want to be without. Otherwise I give them a wide berth.