Will Flora be visiting your garden this May Day?
Her spring festival and ones like it have been an opportunity to celebrate spring for hundreds of years. For some of us, it’s often a case of looking forward to a month or two of reliably warm weather.
In the UK, April’s weather is quixotic, to say the least! We might have hot days where plants wilt. Followed by April showers: showers of rain, sleet and snow! And our garden plants suffer from sudden frosts.
In 2013 April was a cruel month of rain, and cold and wind, with frosty nights but very few sunny days. The plants in our gardens suffered, assuming they risked growing at all. This lengthening of winter affected not just British gardens but gardens elsewhere, the United States for example.
In 2017 we have had a mix of tropical heat and arctic winds. Early blossom on the trees has possibly been blown off before the bees can pollinate it all.
But despite the weather, there has been a flowering and greening of our gardens. According to the Met office data, overall April 2017 was sunny and warm.
And just around the corner is May Day. So will we be celebrating spring in the garden at last?
May Day, Beltane in the Celtic calendar, is celebrated in the Northern hemisphere as the first day of summer. Certainly May is when the flowers and crops grow in earnest, the days are longer so more work can be achieved out in the fields and plots and life seems full of…life.
Flora, a Roman goddess who appears on the cover page of Plews Spring Garden eBook, is the harbinger of spring. She is the bringer of life after the frost of winter. The Romans celebrated her festival, Floralia, around April 28 – May 3.
They would decorate trees with ribbons and garlands in her honour; dance and feast. The tradition of a decorated maypole grew out of this, although many places and religions still prefer to decorate the woodland trees.
Although a minor goddess, the return of spring gave Flora an important role. Rome was a mighty empire with a conquering army, but as we all know, an army marches on its stomach, so food and agriculture was central to Rome’s power.
So whilst many see her as a gentle form of spring fertility rites, more concerned with flowers than animals mating, Flora holds the key to more than a few pretty posies.
Without flowers, there is nothing for bees, butterflies, moths and wasps and a host of other pollinating insects and animals to feed upon. And without these natural pollinators, the edible crops would not be fertilised. The blossom would not turn into a fruit, vegetable or nut.
Reduced to a diet of wind-pollinated plants only, many animals would not survive.
In other words, the whole food chain or pyramid, with humans at the top, would collapse. Approximately one third of the food we eat can be directly linked to Flora’s ability to bring her flowers back into bloom in the spring.
Would you like some help growing your own or to encouraging bees in to your garden? With Gardening lessons perhaps? Or an area of your garden re-designed and built to form an ornamental fruit and vegetable potager?
Why not drop us an email and ask about how we can help with your Flora inspired garden vision?
Related Gardening articles you may enjoy from our Award Winning Blog
May Day and Mayday
May Gardens full of Scented Flowers
The Gardening Year – Quotes and Thoughts from the Garden
The First Day of Spring and the Spring Equinox
