Walk past a lavender hedge on a warm July afternoon — brush your hand through it as you pass — and something happens that is difficult to explain rationally. The tension drops out of your shoulders. You breathe differently. It is one of those rare plants that seems to act on the nervous system almost before you’ve consciously registered the scent.

There is something almost theatrical about borage. It arrives in the garden in late spring — a little rough around the edges, with coarse hairy leaves and an ungainly habit — and then one morning it opens its flowers and everything is forgiven. Five perfect star-shaped petals of the most extraordinary blue: not the washed-out blue of a summer sky, but a deep, saturated, almost electric cobalt that stops you in your tracks. You may have noticed that our logo is a borage flower