She is small and unassuming, blooming in crevices in paths and paving or as a frilly froth at the front of old-fashioned flower borders. Sweet Alice is an old-fashioned girl indeed.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Sweet Alice is more commonly called alyssum these days. She is also no longer used to cure – or attempt to cure – victims of the bites of rabid dogs (do not try this.).
There are modern cultivars, like Carpet of Snow, that are taller and slightly more flower covered than the old unnamed ones you'll find blooming year after year in old gardens.
But whichever you grow, they will be hardy, perennial and sweetly scented, though you may need to bend down to notice their honey fragrance unless you grow a lot of it. It is worth growing a lot.
Alyssum may seem unassuming, but it can be extraordinarily useful. For some reason its flowers attract more hoverflies, those lovely pest eaters, than even the much-touted phacelia.
If you grow a carpet of alyssum on shaley or clay soils you may find that two or three years later, Sweet Alice has conditioned the soil for you, so that fussier plants will grow.
I love it grown in between paving. Weedy paving looks ugly. Paving scattered with clumps of alyssum is a delight and its severity is softened by the mounds of flowers in white, purple, lavender, pink and even a pale buttery yellow.
Alyssum is also excellent as a weed suppressant. As far as I know it doesn't produce any substance that inhibits the germination of weed seeds as gone-to-seed brassicas do, although it is a member of the same large family.
Its main purpose is as a small, easy-care, floriferous and short-lived perennial filler.
Weeds love bare ground. Cover bare soil between flowers or veg with alyssum and weeds can't get a roothold. Alyssum is also shallow-rooted, needs little food or water, mostly because it produces so little growth, so it won't compete with the plants around it.
Alyssum is a perennial, but I've found that in drought or extreme cold the coloured varieties seem to vanish while the white ones persist.
Alyssum is ridiculously easy to grow. Buy seeds, not seedlings – each plant is so small you'd need a huge number of seedlings to make a show.
Scatter the seeds on bare soil, each about a third of a finger length apart, in full sun or lightly dappled shade; water lightly so the seeds don't clump together, then watch them grow.
Keep watering till well established, feed with slow-release plant food to get them growing and then forget them. Or rather, enjoy them, as they solve your garden problems for you, in the sweetest, most fragrant and unassuming way imaginable.
This week I am:
- arguing with the chooks – I say it is spring, with more daylight, and they should be laying. They say the nights are still in the minus numbers and they are entitled to wait until the nights are balmy;
- picking daffodils, a lot of daffodils … daffs are one of the few flowers where you can just pluck a bunch, shove them in a vase and they look stunning, especially if it is a brown pottery vase or a blue glass one, my current favourites, no flower arranging skills needed, which is useful as I have none to give;
- regretting planting Russian garlic among the daffodils in the terrace above the bathroom, as it is difficult to tell which is garlic and which is daffodil until they flower, or you pick a garlic- scented leaf – do not eat the daffodils (they are toxic) and, while Russian garlic does bloom, it is not nearly as stunning as daffodils, especially just now, when flagrant colour is a glory;
- hoping the pot plants revive – Bryan forgot to water them while I was away at the Brisbane Writers' Festival and I forgot to ask him to do it;
- waiting for the first rose of spring;
- still trying to decide which tomatoes we'll grow – I don't want to to plant much this year (those may be famous last words) but tomatoes and melons and apple cucumbers survive drought and neglect, as long as they are in excellent and well-fed soil, which we have now established. And I haven't decided which melons we'll grow either, except that they will be small, fast-maturing ones, with a stunning flavour, which almost any melon has if it is allowed to ripen fully before being picked, and isn't cold stored, though a good melon does taste best when serve chilled … but only chilled for an hour or so, to keep it from rotting for a while once it has been cut.
N.B. A covering of plastic clingwrap does not improve the taste of a melon (or sweet corn, or anything, really).
