10/30/08

Matthiola/Mattioli

Matthiola incana 'Cinderella Mix'

This choice early variety will be the belle of the ball in your favorite flower bed. Delightfully fragrant drifts of color range from magenta to lavender to the purest of whites. Plants are multi-branching and sturdy with numerous flower spikes on each plant. Easy to grow and excellent as a front of the border plant. Recipient of the Award of Garden Merit by Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society.

Matthiola, named after an Italian botanist, has been referred to as “the one stock which pays rich dividend no matter what the whimseys of the market.” This cottage garden favorite performs well under cool conditions and requires just moderate watering.


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I was talking with my brother the other day about this catalog mock-up I put together as part of a sample spread, sharing with him the quote "the one stock which pays rich dividend no matter what the whimseys of the market". My friend Alice T.A. Quackenbush again, The Annuals of Flowerland (1927). I remarked to him how appropriate her comment from 1927 remained today in light of current market woes. But he was more taken with the reference to Italian botanist Mattioli. As a coincidence it turns out my brother purchased some hand-colored illustrations by Pietro Andrea Mattioli published in 1568. Mattioli was responsible for the transition of the study of plants for medicinal purposes to the study of plants as objects of interest themselves. To find out more about these illustrations and


The 'Cinderella Mix' was purchased from Chiltern Seeds in Cumbria, England and proved itself worthy all summer long of being a recipient of Oxfordshire's Garden Centre Association's "Fragrance of the Year" award. The scent of stock still transports me back to early girlhood years in northern California where my parents grew stock as a garden staple.

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