Letters to Wendy
Paradise after five years
HAVING seen the flowers of strelitzia, or the bird of paradise, at Gran Canaria, I wondered whether I could grow one of these beautiful blooms myself. So I bought a packet of Strelitzia reginae seeds, scarified and soaked six seeds, then placed them in damp horticultural sand. They had to be kept somewhere warm, so I put them in the airing cupboard.
The packet stated that it could take one-six months for the seeds to germinate, so after a month I looked to
