There are two plants I’ve kept in pots for longer than I can remember. Even the same pots. Both of them start to strut their stuff at this time of year, when the garden is winding down. Nandina domestica doesn’t have a traditional garden name, becomes a flourish of narrow red leaves, and Meyer’s Lemon’s lemons ripen to bright pale yellow among its glossy green leaves. The lemon has occupied its handsome Tuscan pot, decorated with moulded lemons, for more than 35 years, its soil unchanged, except for the two inches of compost I dress it with in winter. It hasn’t seen the sun for the past ten years, being on our north-facing verandah. I water it weekly in summer, scarcely ever in winter. The fruit I picked last week, thin-skinned but juicy, was as close as lemons get to sweet.
The nandina, Nanten in Japanese and Sacred Bamboo in America, was a berry in the botanical garden at Kobe, on the south coast of Japan. I picked the berries because they were yellow rather than the usual red. The nanten is Japan’s doorstep plant, the traditional welcome, standing on the stone threshold that is kept wet, furnished with a fresh pile of salt, to welcome visitors. Superstition says the salt wards off evil spirits. Another story is that it attracts the draught oxen that once pulled important people’s wagons. The salt, they say, signalled complaisant ladies within.
