... a potager:-
" 'There is a splash of bright green like a rug thrown over the brown earth lying next to rows of grey flags, with common or garden parsley and leeks and edgings of herbs ... Overall a grey-green bloom jewelled at intervals with rubied fruits, with here and there embroidery of strawberries. There's a breadth of what might be tropical ferns, but is in fact chou de Russie; the bloom and curl of its leaves giving an illusion of softest velvet ... sweet corn looks like tropical bedding and globe artichokes are as fine in form as classic acanthus. There's grandeur and colour in rows of red cabbages and purple, decorative kale.'
She dreamed of alleys of old pleached fruit trees, iron hoops like great croquet hoops on which soft fruits would be closely trained. In summer there would be unusual vegetables such as calabrese, aubergines and all kinds of salad such as lamb's lettuce, and sorrel growing between hedges of common fennel: 'thick soft feather-green in summer with shapely and stately yellow flowers flung up' in autumn. In January there would be a fine crop of creamy-headed chicory and good seakale to be kept in the cellar. On the walls with their old-fashioned thatched eaves would be espaliered fruits, melons and gourds growing in the hothouse, and the cool fruit shed smothered in clematis 'Virgin's Bower'."
From The Surprising Life of Constance Spry by Sue Shephard.
