Jane Allison from Mayfield Plants returned to give us another of her well received talks. This time her theme was, “a country walk.” She used some of her extensive collection of personal pictures of wild plants to relate how wild flowers influence us as gardeners. She explained that if we understand the environment in which we find a particular wild plant grows it will help us to place its cultivated relatives in our gardens.

    During the talk she gave us snippets of information about wild plants use in herbal remedies for balms, ointments and tisanes. She also included literary references to Shakespeare and Hardy and the plants that they included in their work.

    Her walk took us through country gardens with plants such as lady’s mantel, sweet william, lupin, delphinium and rosa rugosa. From there she strayed into churchyards, with their undisturbed areas, that might have cuckoo pint, hawk bit and yarrow. This was followed by a seaside path where she showed thrift, samphire, pineapple mayweed, and slender thistle. Then it was down the banks of a canal, with cow parsley, willow herb and gypsy wort. After this came the country lane and honeysuckle, deadly nightshade and hearts ease. From the lane she took us into meadows with lady’s bedstraw and its uses in dyeing cheese or killing lice in bedding, then comfrey for bruises, convolvulus, dog rose and stitchwort. The walk finished in woodland where there are foxgloves for use in eye and heart treatments, ramsons for flavouring food, bluebells, white dead nettle, yellow archangel and scarlet pimpernel. 

    There were many more plants shown often with humorous asides which kept everyones’ interests. A fascinating talk.