Blue flowers

Bluebell field, Kew Gardens © Mellifluous Dark, all rights reserved

Kew Gardens – the Royal Botanical Gardens – is a splendid place. The botanists must have a battle with the seasons all melding into a sort of summery-autumn mono-season, though. However, there are currently messy carpets of bluebells to be seen, tulips of full skirts and intense colours in manicured flowerbeds, and among my favourite flowers, stunning wisteria. I must admit, I have a penchant for blue flowers.

My parents sought a 'blue moon' rosebush for me when I was a teenager. It blossomed almost all year round in the front garden, its petals almost exactly the shade of the wisteria pictured below. When I drove back to the house that I grew up in and stared from my car window several months ago, there was a paved driveway where my parents had once tended full, rich red roses with velvety petals that had smelled divine, large yellow scented versions with pink edges, white roses, plus, of course, the blue moon rosebush.

Around the roses, there had been fat dahlias, bluebells, multicoloured snapdragons, tulips, begonias, dramatic fuchsias, crocuses, snowdrops, chrysanthemums, those tiny purple flowers that you find in borders, and many more that exist only in old photographs now.

Wisteria, Kew Gardens, © Mellifluous Dark, all rights reserved

I couldn't help but shake my head a little at the thoughtlessness of the owners who had destroyed that small garden and the beauty that had been cultivated within it. Maybe the new people needed the driveway but it was such a small road – no more than 10 houses – and there was always space to park as it was a cul-de-sac.

I hope the driveway culprits struggled hard and had plenty of thorny injuries as they ripped up those roots that had grown solidly for 40 years. Silly perhaps, and it's none of my business, but I feel sorrowful to think of those beautiful plants being deprived of soil, water and life to make way for a bloody driveway.