Six weeks of non-stop flowers

I LOVE cistus. I know that sounds like one of those graffiti declarations you see on walls, but it’s true. I associate them, above all, with Mediterranean gardens and Mediterranean travels. One year in May, I drove through Portugal’s Alentejo, an empty region inhabited only by cork oaks and abandoned cottages. The verges sparkled with Lavandula stoechas and Cistus ladanifer, the species with the largest flowers, 4in across.

Graham Drew, my art master at Winchester, once gave me cuttings