The Fair Weather Gardener - My Magnolia

Purple is the colour of my true love’s hair… actually it isn’t and that’s not even how the song goes, but purple is definitely the colour of the flowers on my magnolia. It’s looking healthier than for a while, with at least two dozen large blossoms and the green of the leaves just beginning to show. I feel purple today, maybe it’s my hair that wants to be an imperial hue.

Magnolia is the dullest of insipid paint colours, which can't decide if it's vaguely yellowish or pinkish, so it stays vague, but then no paint can ever catch the dazzling, pearlescent hues, the soft velvet texture or sweet, subtle scent of the true magnolia blossom.

Those purple flowers glow in the sunlight at the side of the garden, if it was larger I’d plant the magnolia in the ground, but there isn’t really enough space so the poor thing has now languished in a pot for ten years. Last year I refreshed the compost, although it really needs a bigger pot. And if I do put it into a bigger pot, it will be too heavy for me to move around. The whole point of having plants in pots is to be able to move them, ring the changes.

Why did I buy a magnolia which I knew perfectly well I’d never be able to plant into the ground? Because of its name, magnolia Susan!