Who’s still dreaming of summer? I know I am! The nights are drawing in and the clocks have gone back, I’ve even finished my new range of nature inspired Christmas cards but that yearning for summer has inspired me to create some new work all about the Cornflower.

With a distinct lack of floral colour in the garden, I’ve been flicking through the Sarah Raven seed catalogue for next year’s garden inspiration and found and whole host of these wonderfully blue flowers.

You would think that blue flowers, like blue vegetables for example, are a bit of a rarity but if you think about it, there are actually quite a few, and some, including the Cornflower, are described sweetly in this little poem below:

Whimsical Love-in-a-Mist, Himalayan Blue Poppy, elegant Lily of the Nile, graceful Columbines, playful balls of Hydrangea, ravishing Blue Daisy, humble Globe Thistle, delicate Flax blooms, sublime Forget-Me-Not, breath-taking Cornflower, exquisite Blue Anemone. Blooms of every shade of blue. Paradise for me and you.

Words by Line Gauthier

Of course, there are many more blue flowers, but I really do like the Cornflower. They just make me so happy with their ruffled, whirls of petals and extraordinary blue-blueness. In my eyes, they truly epitomise summer.

Whilst doing some research about the Cornflower, I discovered that it’s the flower of remembrance in France, like the red or white Poppy for peace, which is worn on November 11th each year on Armistice Day in the UK. It is also the symbol for motor neurone disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

So, a little bit about the Cornflower:

Cornflowers (Centaurea) are part of the Asteraceae family and are easy to grow from seed during the spring in well-drained soil in full sun. They make great cut flowers and are enjoyed by bees, butterflies, and other pollinating insects. Why not pop a packet of cornflower seeds into a nature lover’s Christmas stocking this year? I know, as a keen gardener, that’s the sort of thing that would please me!

They are UK native plants and once grew profusely amongst cornfields sharing the same growing conditions as arable crops, but when farmers began using herbicides, they started to disappear. The decline of the Cornflower illustrates what has happened to many of our wildflowers over the last 60 years.

On a more serious note, if you have time and are either worried or interested in learning more about the use of chemicals in our day-to-day wearables and consumables, The problem with pesticides is an interesting video from the Pesticide Action Network and the vegan cosmetics brand, Lush.

Nowadays, after years of breeding, Cornflowers are cultivated as an annual, often found in wildflower seed mixes, and it is a wonderful sight to see them along roadside verges, wastelands and in gardens.

I do hope you’ll like my new art work and find the information about pesticides useful.

Have a great rest of the week!

Jill.

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