Love-in-a-Mist

Love-in-a-Mist is the flower I'd choose if I could only grow one annual. I know — that's a bold claim when sweet peas exist. But nigella has something no other flower has: she's beautiful at every single stage of her life, from the feathery seedling right through to the extraordinary inflated seed pods that rattle in the autumn wind.

The flowers are otherworldly — a haze of the finest, thread-like green bracts surrounding a jewel-like bloom in sky blue, soft pink, or white. The overall effect is exactly what the name promises: a flower hidden in mist. Or caught in a spiderweb of green thread. There's nothing else in the garden that looks quite like it.

I scatter seed in autumn and again in early spring, which gives me two waves of flowers through the summer. They self-seed with such enthusiasm that I haven't actually sown any for three years now — they just appear, in the gravel, between paving, in the borders, wherever they fancy. I consider this a feature, not a problem.

The seed pods are where nigella really shows off. Each one is a perfect striped globe — architectural, graphic, like something from a Dr Seuss illustration — topped with a crown of pointed horns. They dry perfectly on the plant and are extraordinary in winter arrangements. I've seen florists charge serious money for dried nigella pods that grew for free in someone's garden.

She's an annual, so she completes her entire life cycle in a few months. There's something rather moving about that — a whole beautiful existence, from seed to flower to seed pod, in one season.