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Nigel Slater

Nigel Slater Quotes

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Famous Nigel Slater Quotes

“The roses were originally picked as much for their perfume as much for their color and form. (Unlike my first roses, which were bought purely because I was enchanted by their romantic names.) Of the basic musk, myrrh, tea, fruit and old-rose fragrances I am drawn to the latter two. Fruity is a broad bush on a night like tonight. Lady Emma Hamilton, reliable though now retired by the growers, is at her most giving: apricots and white peaches spring to mind. Gertrude Jekyll is one of the most intense of the old-rose scented varieties. She calls me over every time I set foot on the terrace. Unlike the more generous jasmine, even the most scented rose requires us to bend a little, pushing the tip of our nose into the cluster of petals. Not so Gertrude tonight, mingling as she does with the white jasmine, hovering cloud-like over the hot stones of the terrace. I have a plan to bring the Queen of Denmark into the garden too, another old-rose scent, and I long for a decent musk rose such as Buff Beauty, exuding its faint note of cloves on a warm evening.”

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Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
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“Direktör Benschop is a semi-double milky-white rose with egg-yolk-yellow stamens bred by German breeder Mateus Tantau in 1939, though not commercially available till after the war. The garden is also home to Alchymist, the crumpled honey, white and gold climber. I have always struggled with the notion of stripping a rose for its petals, though I do occasionally bring one into the kitchen in June, scattering them over an oval platter of raspberries, a sponge cake dusted with icing sugar or, most memorably, a vast fig meringue the size of a hat at a June wedding.”

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Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
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“Once established, jasmine grows well in this garden, and there are three, no, four varieties now. A soft yellow, like clotted cream, that hangs loosely from the window boxes, shifting in the breeze. A pink variety, Jasminum stephanense, clambers up the brittle, naked stems of a much older plant, using its relative as a trellis. White stars of Jasminum grandiflorum cover the tendrils that have woven a canopy over the courtyard, a fragrant white parasol whose petals fall like snowflakes each autumn.”

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Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
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“Late February has brought crocuses to cheer us in the melancholy of winter. The petals-- white, lilac, mauve and gold-- are perfect against a grey-white sky. We planted a thousand small, hairy corms and a couple of hundred have come up. Plucky little flowers, they must fight against the rain, mice, squirrels and sparrows, all of which seem hell-bent on their destruction. Most welcome are the luminous white Jeanne d'Arc, which have swan-like petals with a tuft of egg-yolk-orange stamens. Others include Orange Monarch, a deep saffron and mauve, and a few Pickwick, the palest lilac with a delicate feathering of mauve. Common varieties, but none the worse for it.”

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Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
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