One of my greatest pleasures whilst tending the flowers out on our terrace is when a passing bumblebee bumps against my arm and I can feel his wings, and he doesn’t get nasty or upset because he perhaps senses that I’m not going to hurt him, or maybe even he knows that I’m his friend (we gardeners are rather fanciful!). Even the ordinary honey bees don’t seem to mind my presence and they often fly close enough for me to feel the movement of their wings in the air. They never sting me, not like wasps – I’m allergic to them (and they seem to know it for they harass me regardless of my pretence at nonchalance); luckily, I haven’t seen many wasps this year.
However, I’ve seen thousands of bees this year, quite recently in fact, and not one by one… Chris discovered them last Friday when he was hanging out the washing in the garden on the sea-side of our house; obviously looking for a new home in which to hibernate for the winter, the bees were buzzing in and around the loose soil all over the steep bank leading down to the railway line. Much as we love bees we weren’t too sure that we wanted our garden to be overrun by them so Chris called Graham, a bee-keeping acquaintance of ours who might have been interested in housing a homeless hive of honey bees.
“They aren’t honey bees,” Graham began, “they’re too small and they are already making homes in the soil. Also it would be too difficult to gather them, and they won’t be honey producers.
“Oh dear,” Chris and I were thinking together, having not yet come to terms with the idea of sharing our garden with so many hobos.
“But they are good pollinators,” smiled the bee enthusiast.
“How many do you think there are?” Chris inquired.
“Oh, it’s only a very small swarm – about four and a half thousand bees,” replied Graham.
Chris was hanging out the washing again this morning (I do help sometimes – really!) and he came back upstairs with something of a triumphant smile on his face.
“They are still there,” he announced proudly.
“And they didn’t sting you or get annoyed?”
“No, most of them don’t even have stings. I was looking them up on Google,” my husband admitted. “I think they are either digger bees or miner bees – not to be confused with a mynah bird.”
I went upstairs and returned with my phone camera, made a bee-line to the hive of activity and took a few photos for my blog readers. While taking shots of our bee-loved new residents I noticed our neighbours’ pampas grass, tall and beautiful against a background of blue sky and sea, and I laughed to myself.
“Why are you laughing?” Chris asked.
“The pampas grass,” I giggled, “I was wondering if Adrian and Sonia know what it means… Maybe I should tell them… But…”
“Bee-have yourself!” said Chris.
So I’m not going to tell them. They’ll have to read my blog to find out. I’ll copy and paste an article on the subject just in case you’re in the dark.
Ah, what beautiful pampas grass!
Embarrassed dog-walkers pass by with eyes fixed ahead!
Exclusive: Pampas grass sales are falling because it is a secret signal for swingers
For decades it was a common feature of suburban front gardens throughout Britain, adding a touch of exoticism to more everyday native planting.
But an unfortunate association with liberal sexual practices appears to have heralded the end of pampas grass as a gardener’s favourite.
Plant sellers says sales have plummeted – in no small part due to the plant being regarded as a secret signal to passersby that its owners are happy to indulge in swinging.
Many nurseries have stopped stocking it entirely, and even large suppliers have seen numbers plummet, as buyers shun the plant for fear of what it means.
Palmstead Nurseries, which sells plants to garden designers for households, commercial gardens and public spaces, says the plant has fallen out of favour.
A decade ago the firm, based in Ashford, Kent, was selling an average of 550 of the plants every year. Annual sales fell to less than 500 five years ago and are now as low as 250.
The plant is one of the least popular of the company’s grass varieties, some of which are so in demand that it sells thousands of plants every year.
Nick Coslett, the company’s marketing manager, said it had fallen out of fashion in part because it was seen as a signal that swingers lived in a house.
He said: “It’s just not in fashion at the moment.
“I’ve got no evidence that it was ever actually used for that – I think it goes back to the fact that it was planted in people’s front gardens.
“But there is that connotation, unfortunately. It’s all part of that 1970s, kitsch feel.”
The plant’s association with swinging has been dismissed as a myth by pampas enthusiasts, but broadcaster Mariella Frostrup said she had inadvertently identified herself as a swinger by planting the grasses outside her Notting Hill home a few years ago.
Since the arrival of her two Cortaderia selloana plants, the presenter said she had been inundated with unwanted inquiries.
Writing on Twitter she said at the time: “Bought two and put them on my balcony. Neighbours have been swarming!”
Steve Dawson, a buyer for Crocus, the largest gardening website in the UK, said it now sold around 300 pampas grass plants a year – a fraction of the amount it sold of other grass varieties.
“A lot of people used to put it in their front gardens – I think people are probably a bit embarrassed about doing that now,” he said.
Another plant nursery, Worcester-based Bransford Webbs, said it had stopped selling pampas grass altogether over a decade ago, because sales figures were so poor.
The plant comes in several different varieties, some of which can grow to up to eight feet (2.4m) tall.
Most nurseries which still sold them said they tended to sell the Pumila variety, which is a, smaller, “dwarf” version of the larger plant. It grows to around five feet (1.5m).
Pampas grass is native to south America and is named for the Pampas region, fertile lowlands covering Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, where they originally grew.
It is very hardy and can produce a significant number of seeds. This has led to the plant being seen as a weed in some countries.
In California, it is classed as an “invasive to avoid” plant, and people are discouraged from planting it in their gardens.
George Hillier, of the Hillier garden centre chain, which has 12 branches, said they had almost completely stopped stocking the plants due to low demand.
He said that embarrassment over the plant’s connotations could be a factor, but that its size and the difficulty of removing it was one of the main things putting gardeners off.
“They are very sharp and they’re very thick,” he said. “Once it’s in and really established, getting rid of it is a couple of days worth of work.”
