I have been haunted of late by a painting by Albrecht Dürer. It’s not the most famous of his pick-it-off-the-page floral works, The Large Turf of 1503, but a portrait of a columbine dated 1526, just two years before his death.

Some art historians say that it and his other late botanical studies might not be the work of the man himself. Who cares? If this painting is an impostor then it’s so artfully naturalistic, so harmoniously off-balance and lovingly unkempt that it out-Dürers Dürer. Whoever was responsible, here is a wonderful likeness created when most flower paintings still owed more to medieval psalters than to science. But it does seem odd that the work should fill me with such nagging d éjà vu.

The painting shows another turf (a tussock, really) with tousled grasses and creeping buttercup. Over them hover the ruched indigo flowers of the columbine (Aquilegia). Then I remember where we’ve met before. Only a few weeks back, I saw this coupling of grass and columbine, this same lucky sod, at the Chelsea Flower Show where designer after designer had brought it to life. It seems Dürer anticipated not only photo-realism but also the romantic naturalism we now want in our gardens.

This postmodern lesson from an Old Master is a small but resounding horticultural breakthrough and one of the best things gardeners are likely to see in 2004. Aquilegias are angelic perennials. Only the soulless could fail to be moved by the clarity of their colours and the intricacy of their structure. But that all depends on a Dürer-like perspective, whereas what they usually give us is Kate Greenaway, cramming borders with a sweet-toothed confection that soon vanishes leaving ugly gaps. I’m equally devoted to ornamental grasses. But all those sweeping lines and chiaroscuro get you only so far. At some point you want to splash some pigment on the canvas. The answer is to take a leaf from Albrecht’s sketchbook and put the two together.

Of course, the pigment needs to be chosen with care and that is exactly what plant breeders have been doing of late. Dürer got lucky when he found his sitter — not too tall and a good inky violet blue — but modern propagation techniques deliver the grace and glamour without the risk. The days when Aquilegia vulgaris was dismissed as a quaint cottage garden plant and left to muddle on in multicoloured promiscuity seem to be over. Garden centres are bristling with carefully selected and colour-consistent cultivars.

Their arrival began a while back with A. ‘Nora Barlow’, a curious columbine with densely double-quilled flowers in lime and candy pink that are best espied among the blue-green blades of Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’. Nora has been joined now by other pompon cultivars such as ‘Black Barlow’ and ‘Blue Barlow’, whose names speak for themselves.

One of these doubles deserves special mention, however. With flights of ragged blooms in gleaming maroon, A. ‘Ruby Port’ produces miraculous effects let loose among old-fashioned shrub roses and grasses that produce golden wands of flower, such as Deschampsia cespitosa. For mixing with more delicate grasses such as Deschampsia flexuosa, choose smaller, perkier varieties in clear blues and violets. With white-variegated grasses such as Phalaris arundinacea ‘Feesey’, try A. ‘William Guinness’, whose flowers, are black above and white below. These columbines are all easy plants for sunny places. In shadier spots try Aquilegia ‘Vervaeneana Group’ with lime foliage and mauve flowers.

Cut down their flowerheads once they have finished, and these aquilegias will not only live longer but may flower twice in a season. Let them set seed and they will not only grow senile more swiftly but also, in all likelihood, produce some rather undistinguished offspring. However, somewhere among their spontaneous spawn there may lurk the perfect columbine, so it’s always worth giving a few their head. Dürer, after all, found his without a garden centre.

Explore Gardens

• Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

• Chelsea Flower Show

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