Fritillaria meleagris naturalises beautiful in a wildflower patch.

One of the things I’ve loved the most about the dream garden this spring has been the fritillary meadow in the wildflower patch. Snake’s-head fritillaries are the best wildflower in Britain, to my mind. They mesmerise us because they look too beautiful and intricate to have been the sort of thing that naturally crops up

fritillaria blooms

They look too exotic to belong in our gentle landscape, but that’s the beauty of British wildflowers: they shyly show off beautiful, intricate, bright patterns without most of us even noticing.

fritillary purple

Some of these plants were bulbs from Plant Me Now that I buried in the meadow patch in the autumn, and some of them were an impulse purchase from a garden centre to bulk up the number of these beautiful exotic flowers in the patch.

white fritillaria meleagris

And every so often, the white flowers, with a ghostly green checkerboard pattern on it, appear, and float in the sea of purple lanterns. From a distance, a fritillary meadow looks like a Holy Week parade.

fritillaries meadow

Up close, the flowers reveal that it’s not just purple or white. It’s deep purple and lighter purple checkerboard, or deep purple and white checkerboard, or white. They are a beautiful mix.

fritillary meadow

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