If I had to choose just one flower, it would definitely be columbine.

Aquilegia, as it’s known in Latin, is not the most showy plant, nor the rarest, but for me it carries something no catalogue variety ever could. It has been here for as long as I can remember – and long before that. This is the same old variety my grandma once had growing in her garden, and it has now been part of this place for more than eighty years.

There is something quite special about that thought. Plants come and go, borders change, and new varieties arrive every year, but this one has simply stayed. Or perhaps more accurately, it has quietly moved.

Columbine is not a plant that stays politely where you put it. Individual plants only bloom for a few years in one spot before fading away, but the plant continues by setting seed and starting again somewhere new. One spring you notice it in one corner, and a few years later it appears in another. It disappears, and then returns as if nothing ever happened. It finds its own place.

That is exactly how mine behaves. It never really leaves the garden, but it never fully stays still either.

My earliest gardening memories are tied to this plant. As a child, I used to collect the seeds and scatter them around the garden without much thought. I planted them wherever I felt like it – along the paths, between other plants, sometimes even in places where nothing else seemed to grow. And very often, they did.

There is something generous about columbine. It doesn’t expect perfection. It grows in sun or light shade, finds small gaps, and quietly settles in. It fills that early summer moment in the garden, after the spring bulbs have faded and before the stronger summer flowers take over. The blooms are light and slightly nodding, with their distinctive spurs, delicate but never fragile.

Over time, the plants have changed a little. The colours are not always exactly the same from year to year. That is part of their charm. New seedlings appear with small variations, different shades or slightly altered shapes. But the original feeling of the plant remains – something familiar, something continuous.

The name Aquilegia comes from the Latin word aquila, meaning eagle, referring to the shape of the flower spurs. It’s an interesting detail, but for me the plant has always been something softer. I still think of it as my grandma’s flower.

Every year, when the first blooms open, it feels like a quiet return. Nothing dramatic, nothing demanding attention. Just a simple reminder that something has continued, through seasons and years, without needing much care from me.

These days, I don’t try to control where it grows. I let it decide. It always finds a place that works.
And maybe that is exactly why it has lasted this long. Not because it was carefully planned or protected, but because it has been allowed to move, to change, and to belong in its own way.

I’m just glad it’s still here.