All About Thyme: Peter Rabbit Garden

Am a sucker for Beatrix Potter. Animals, gardens, tea...what's not to love? Not that I have loads of her stuff in my house...just an old tea tin from my first trip to Europe and a board book for Tater Tot featuring Peter Rabbit (to get him into it, I had to read it with a British accent). Back when I was a child myself, my mother gave me a puzzle set that I also used as a cereal box in my play kitchen. Once a foodie, always a foodie.

So, today (Beatrix Potter's birthday!) I was thrilled to read this bit about a Peter Rabbit Garden in author Susan Albert's marvelous weekly newsletter, All About Thyme. I dashed off a quick email to her requesting permission to run the following copyrighted text, and the ever-gracious Susan obliged. Enjoy!

Peter Rabbit Garden

"My news is all gardening at present, and supplies. I went to see an old lady at Windermere and impudently took a large basket and trowel with me. She had the most untidy garden I ever saw. I got nice things in handfuls without any shame, amongst others a bundle of lavender slips...and another bunch of violet suckers."

—Beatrix Potter, letter to Millie Warne, October 12, 1907 

A Peter Rabbit Garden would be a lovely project for you and your children (or grandchildren) to share—or just for you, if you're a fan of Miss Potter's work. The garden could be a container on the deck or a corner of your garden, or a larger area with a piece of garden art in the middle: Peter himself, perhaps, or a wheelbarrow with his coat on it? You might want to put a little wooden fence around it (like the fence around Mr. MacGregor's garden), or perhaps a low stone wall, such as the one that Tom, Moppet, and Mittens sat on in The Tale of Tom Kitten. And certainly you'll want to read Miss Potter's "little books" (as she liked to call them) and pick out the flowers you see growing in the pictures she painted with such care—some of them in her very own garden at Hill Top Farm.

Peter's Plants
These plants are all mentioned in the Little Books. These would all be appropriate for Peter's garden.

Lemon Balm
Mint
Chamomile
Tansy
Lavender
Sage
Thyme
Rosemary
Parsley Strawberry
Lettuce
Beets
Radish
Rhubarb
Onions
Roses
Pinks
Pansies

Miss Potter's Garden
Miss Potter's garden at Hill Top Farm included a great many herbs and flowers, many of them passalong plants. "I have been planting hard all day—thanks to a very well meant but slightly ill-timed present of saxifrage from Mrs. Taylor at the corner cottage." In the hedgerows, she found violets, daffodils, primroses, wild strawberries, and wood anemones, and wall-rue fern from an old bridge. She completely redesigned the garden, making it what it is today: a beautiful cottage garden brimming with color and foliage.

Read more about the estimable Miss Potter:

• The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, by Susan Wittig Albert
  
• Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, by Linda Lear
  
• Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales

"Timmy Willie tells Johnny Town Mouse about his garden: When it rains, I sit in my little sandy burrow and shell corn and seeds from my Autumn store. I peep out at the throstles and blackbirds on the lawn, and my friend Cock Robin. And when the sun comes out again, you should see my garden and the flowers—roses and pinks and pansies—no noise except the birds and bees, and the lambs in the meadows."

—Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Johnny-Town Mouse 

Thanks again, Susan! Just got a warm fuzzy making the connection between Potter's stories and the rosemary that Tater Tot insists upon plucking from our yard to give to all departing visitors. Am trying to teach him to say, "Rosemary...for remembrance"...but that's a lot of R's for a toddler. I think he gets the gist, though.

Note that readers can pre-order Susan's new Potter-inspired book on Amazon. And I personally and highly recommend China Bayles' Book of Days, which I gave to my mom last Christmas.