Himalayan Balsam Arrives in Nova Scotia
Himalayan balsam ( Impatiens glandulifera Royle), otherwise known as Poor Man’s Orchid or Policeman’s Helmet, has been ‘escaping’ from gardens since 1839, when John Forbes Royle, the former curator of the East India Company’s botanical gardens in Saharanpur, northern India, gave his specimens to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London. Fifteen years later, the fast-growing bamboo-like annual with purple and reddish stalks and pink, purple, or white flowers was found throughout the English countryside; by the turn of the century it had infested wide swathes of of Europe and had begun to spread across the United States and Canada. Some five years ago, it arrived in my garden in Cow Bay, Nova Scotia. The elegant import from India became a staple of the ‘wild woodland gardens’ promoted by William Robinson, the celebrity gardener who rebelled against manicured British flowerbeds and promoted gardens with broad expanses of bright flowers growing together in a less tidy and...