A walk on the wild side: Primrose

'Do not, as some ungracious pastors do

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,

while, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads

and reaks not his own rede.'

- Ophelia, Act I Scene III, Hamlet

In Shakespeare's time a path strewn with primroses was a common metaphor: it signified the easy option, the choice that was alluring, the least challenging and most self-indulgent.

There's a note of rebuke in Ophelia's words – as also in Macbeth, where a porter speaks about 'treading the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire'. The implication is that following the beckoning of the pretty little primrose is to disregard the right and proper, but more difficult course: primroses, in other words, mean temptation.

It's an interesting dark note to what's generally seen as a symbol of youth, happiness, spring and innocence: a reminder that youth can be impetuous, happiness a shallow goal and innocence corrupted.

I find primroses a temptation that's very hard to resist at this time of year. We're lucky enough to have banks of them here: tumbling down the grass in cheeky froths of palest yellow, shrugging off the coarsest of grasses, peeping out from among hedgerow plants and at the feet of roses: if you plant them on purpose they often fail to thrive, yet they'll seed themselves into the oddest of corners and seemingly love it.

Primroses were among the first flowers ever to be grown. They were brought in from the fields by mediaeval peasants at the time of the Domesday Book alongside cowslips, verbascums and mallows to be planted among the cabbages and onions, and cared for with as much love as any modern gardener.

Of course these days that's illegal: primroses are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act and you can't pick them, let alone dig them up wholesale. Luckily they're not too difficult to raise from seed, as long as you sow them on the surface of the compost – don't cover – and leave them outdoors and exposed for the frost to get to them.

And quite apart from their sheer prettiness – and the joy they bring as the 'first rose' of spring – they are extraordinarily useful (one of the reasons they earned their place in those mediaeval cottage gardens).

Every part is useful: you can infuse the plant and its leaves to make a tea (one part primrose to 10 parts hot water) which will calm and soothe the nerves. It's also said to ease coughs and rheumatism.

Culpeper wrote in the 17th century about making an ointment out of the leaves to heal wounds, and also recommends an extract the juice of the roots (packed with essential oils and also good in pot pourri) taken 'snuffed up the nose' for nervous disorders. He warns that it 'occasions violent sneezing' and should only be taken in small doses. I wouldn't try it at home.

The fresh flowers are edible and can be used in salads or to add a pleasantly fragrant flavour to desserts: I like the sound of 'primrose pottage', or perhaps rice pudding with almonds, honey, saffron and ground primrose flowers. You can also crystallise them like violets. The leaves, too, can be eaten in salads (pick them young) and also boiled to eat as a vegetable. I haven't tried this myself – must have a go - but if anyone has I'd be very interested to know what they taste like.

Primroses are no longer as common as they once were; the dryness of the east of the country has all but driven them out, as they thrive only in damp conditions (one of the reasons why they do so well in the West Country: they are the county flower of Devon).

But they remain woven through the history of the country quite as closely as any quintessentially English flower.  Primrose Day, held each year on April 19, is the anniversary of the death of former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Apparently primroses were his favourite flower, and Queen Victoria regularly sent him posies from Osborne House (or he sent them to her: accounts vary). To this day a posy of primroses is laid at Disraeli's statue by Westminster Abbey each year.

Incidentally – next time you look into a clump of primroses, see if you can tell whether they're pin-eyed or thrum-eyed. This genetic diversification helps promote cross-pollination: pin-eyed flowers hold the female stigma well above the male anthers, like a green pinhead, while in thrum-eyed flowers the male anthers are to the fore and appear as an orange ring, with no central knob.

PS: I am here entirely ignoring the benighted race of hybrids about which Mr Colborn has ranted with much aptness and fluency here. Wildings only in this garden. 'Nuff said.

A walk on the wild side: Gorse

Ulex europaeus catching my eye in the morning sunlight

'It's just the sort of place,' he explained, 'for an Ambush.'

'What sort of bush?' whispered Pooh to Piglet. 'A gorse-bush?'

'My Dear Pooh,' said Owl in his superior way. 'Don't you know what an Ambush is?'

'Owl,' said Piglet, looking round at him severely. 'Pooh's whisper was a perfectly private whisper and there was no need - '

'An Ambush,' said Owl,' is a sort of Surprise.'

'So is a gorse-bush sometimes,' said Pooh.

Gorse is not a much-loved plant.

It is unremittingly prickly. In fact it has become a byword for all that is prickly in life. Winnie the Pooh's wariness on the subject of gorse-bushes came from a close encounter with one after his experiment with the bees failed spectacularly. And whenever the Famous Five needed a really good hiding place, there was always a handy gorse bush around (mysteriously and perhaps a little conveniently always hollow on the inside).

But for the last month my eye has been irresistibly caught every day as I walk the dogs by a vivid flash of yellow in the hedgerow. It stops you in your tracks: the only bright colour in a winter landscape of sepia brown and green.

I think it must have blown in from Exmoor, 40 miles to the west, as we're on a relatively gentle hillside of hazel hedgerows and sleepy sheep and it's the only gorse bush for miles.

West Country names belie a relationship between man and gorse bush as old as the hills it grows on. Another common name for the plant is furze, and place names like Furzey Island off the Dorset coast, Furzey Gardens in the New Forest, and the names of numerous farms, roads and houses reveal the plant's long history here (Furzey is also a common local surname in Somerset).

It was once almost indispensable. The fierce burning properties of gorse made it perfect fuel for fires hot enough to bake bricks: you're well advised not to grow gorse close to a house as it's prone to spontaneous combustion in a prolonged drought.

People made it into fearsome besom brooms to sweep chimneys and hung their clothes out to dry on it as it held them in place better than any clothes peg. It is a good strong dye, the flowers turning cloth yellow or green and the bark a smokey darker green, it's a medicine for jaundice, kidney stones and scarlet fever, and the flower buds make good caper substitutes. The flowers are edible and can be used in salads, steeped in boiling water for a tea, or turned into wine (recipe here: the Vikings are rumoured to have brewed a gorse beer, which may explain their generally atrocious behaviour).

It was also much used to keep witches away: the common confusion between gorse and broom comes from its ancient use as a broom to sweep curses and hexes away from the door of the house.

There are three native gorses: U. europaeus, U. gallii (found, as the name suggests, on Welsh mountainsides, and smaller than the common gorse); and U. minor, almost prostrate, flowering in autumn and found mainly in the New Forest. Gorse flowering alongside heather in great swathes across the moorlands is probably one of the most breathtaking of Britain's natural spectacles.

But - bright yellow splashes in hedgerows aside – it's not something you'd have in your garden, surely.

Well I'd just like to make a little plea for this old friend. If you have a coastal garden, or one where the soil is really, really poor, there are few plants which will thrive better. It makes a dense and thorough windbreak: and it'll keep any amount of burglars out.

And it is just wonderful for wildlife, particularly bees. As well as the main flourish in winter and early spring, it produces a few flowers sporadically all year round ('When gorse is out of blossom, kissing's out of fashion', the old saying goes), which bumblebees find irresistible. The flowers, incidentally, are as explosive as the seedpods: they go off like a cannon the moment the bee clambers on, pasting the poor insect with pollen.

There are cultivated forms: U. gallii 'Mizen' is prostrate and tiny, growing to just 30cm x 30cm, and there was once a useful-sounding U. europaeus 'Strictus' (sometimes 'Fastigiatus') which makes for a good low hedge, though it's no longer listed, sadly.

More commonly-found is Ulex europaeus 'Plenus' or sometimes 'Flore Pleno', compact and double and recommended by Christopher Lloyd who calls it 'a fine sight in spring' and says it has coconut-scented blooms (he's less keen on gorse when it comes to propagating the stuff: 'a painful operation best left to the nurseryman', he says).

A walk on the wild side

Thistle seedhead catching the sunshine (before the snows came)

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time wandering through countryside, usually with dog in tow, and it's hard to do that without appreciating just how remarkable wild plants and flowers are. They don't get so much as a smidgin of attention from us, yet they seed themselves, grow up bravely fighting off all manner of weeds (actually they often are weeds) and pests and make it to adulthood to produce a heart-stopping flower of their own. As a gardener it's all a bit humbling.

So since I often think they look at least as pretty as garden flowers I thought I'd give them their own spot in the limelight here, starting with a thistle I kind of wish I had in my garden as its seedheads were nicer (and much more sturdy) than most of mine have been this winter. But then the whole point of wildflowers is that they aren't in your garden, and you wouldn't want them to be if they were (I spend a lot of time and prickled fingers pulling thistles out of my garden, in fact). So I give you the thistle: in its own place and its own time, and long may it stay there so we can be stopped in our tracks while out dog-walking.