The All Hallows Flower Count

A quarter century ago when we still lived in England we used to record how many plants were still in flower at Christmas. In Quebec that’s always going to be zero but in recent years J has taken to making an annual list of the flowers still blooming in our Garden at All Hallows.

This is, of course, on 1st November after the preceding night of Hallowe’en and you would expect that at this point in the year, when normally we would have had the first frosts, some years even a bit of snow, there would not be much to be enjoyed but a walk around our garden this afternoon turned up the following flowers. An excellent count:

A total of 37 species in 2022 …

Wild Species

Horticultural species
Tansy

Aster, common blue wood aster

Fleabane

Obediance

Dandelion

Common sowthistle

Wormseed wallflower

Smartweed

Bladder campion

Wild carrot (Queen Ann’s Lace)

Dartford pink

Black eyed Susan

Brown eyed Susan

Common sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale)

Veronica longifolia

Birdsfoot trefoil

Monkshood

Pearly everlasting

Wild basil (Clinopodium vulgare) or Lesser Calamint (Clinopodium nepeta)

Tagetes

 Cosmos

Heliotrope

Japanese anemone

Rudbeckia Herbstsone

Cuphea hybrid

Bidens

Garden Chrysanthemum

Zinnia

Garden phlox

Autumn crocus

Nasturtium

Pansy

Perennial geranium

Pelargonium

Lavender

Vinca

Centaurea

One pleasant finding was a plant previously mislabelled by the garden centre – a patch of what we think is perhaps Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare) shyly hiding amongst the grasses. The tiny flowers are less than a centimetre across. A correspondent has suggested through that it may be Lesser Calamint (Clinopodium nepeta). We shall see …