Within the enclosed space which forms the Cathedral Close at Canterbury, the gardens displayed a variety of flowers. A lone pyramidal orchid was flowering in the middle of one of the lawns of the cathedral itself.
The yellow-flowered red hot poker, a variant I’d never even heard of before, was in a garden on the other side of the ring road. Everything else here was within the precinct.
Purple salsify is another species I’d never heard of before. Around the west midlands salsify is quite a common wild flower – jack go to bed at noon, with yellow flowers which close around mid-day. This garden plant was my first introduction to the purple species. A few days later, I noticed it was one of the many plants growing as a wild flower on the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve (pictures soon).