THE POISON GARDEN website 
Pontifications on Poison
Being some ramblings on events associated with poisonous plants.
Saturday 13th July 2013
…because every garden is a poison garden
One of the local villages had an ‘Open Gardens’ day to raise funds so, since the weather was excellent but too hot for doing any actual gardening, I went along to test my ability to find poisonous plants in any garden and justify the tagline I use for this site and my talks.
There were twenty gardens on show and I must be truthful and say I only scored nineteen out of twenty. That was because one of the ‘gardens’ was completely covered in gravel or decking since, according to the owner, her and her partner worked fulltime so wanted somewhere they could sit out in without needing a lot of work.
There was the usual assortment of poisonous plants but this display of Aconitum napellus, monkshood, was the most eye-catching.
From a ‘lethal lovely’ point of view, one of the biggest attractions of monkshood is its popularity with bees and I always try, and mostly fail, to get a good picture of bees on the plant. The trouble is that, because they move so quickly, I rarely get the bee sharp. I did manage it with this picture but it isn’t really the bee’s best side.
That means this picture is still the best I’ve ever managed, taken seven years ago.
If bees were ants I might stand more chance as this ant on a Digitalis, foxglove, shows.
