The stately delphinium, that most elegant of garden flowers, typically standing resplendent en pointe in clusters at the rear of the border, arrayed in a petalled garb of deep blue or rich purple, has rather fallen from favour in recent years. Taller varieties generally require staking, which is awkward and unattractive, while the flowers do not last long, blooming for four weeks or so from late June into July.

But these are not the real reasons for the waning of the plant’s popularity. Like the hollyhock, another tall flower with almost medieval appeal, in the 20th century the delphinium – otherwise known as larkspur or, as Shakespeare would have it, ‘lark’s-heel’ – became associated with the ‘cottage garden’ aesthetic of the British Arts and Crafts movement, utilised in planned planting schemes based on considered arrangements of different colours. The great planting designer Gertrude Jekyll liked to use delphiniums in themed blue and grey borders, their vertical form contrasting with more jagged and spiky plants.

This style remained de rigueur in gardens from the Edwardian period until the mid-1990s, when planting took a ‘naturalistic turn’ and the delphinium found itself eclipsed by other columnar plant species with more ‘wildling appeal’, such as verbascums and foxgloves. Its colour role was replaced by plants including deep-blue salvia,