Though most young people know nothing about plants, some facts are universal. Nasturtium is peppery, honeysuckle is sweet. Dock leaves cure nettle stings. If you are chased into a river by assailants, breathe through reeds to evade capture. Mistletoe was once for druids and is now for creeps at office parties. A buttercup under the chin somehow signifies whether or not you like butter. And of course, pampas grass is for swingers.
Everyone knows this. Pampas grass, cortaderia selloana, the great swishy reed that looks like a cross between a squirrel’s tail and a sandy explosion, is the herbaceous equivalent of a big red neon sign saying ‘WE ARE SWINGERS’. It means soft lighting and suburban kink. It means bums hoisted onto kitchen islands, Ann Summers underwear on a corner sofa, plastic prosecco flutes being knocked off garden furniture while the Skybox discreetly records that evening’s episode of Last Tango in Halifax. You plant it outside your house to signal to other swingers that you enjoy ‘the lifestyle’.
Yet during lockdown, I became convinced one of our longest held beliefs about suburban life was untrue. It was on one of those interminable walks through the estate at the back of our house, via the alleyways and cul-de-sacs, when I would look at the houses; look at the gardens. I’d think about the lives of the people who lived there and what their hopes and dreams were. It was an extraordinary time when we were granted new perspectives on life, and by the beginning of 2022, I had become convinced that a tuft of pampas grass in a front garden does not really signify that the owner is a swinger.
It just doesn’t make sense. As recently as 2017, I was reading that the wholesale market for the plant had absolutely crashed, for reputational reasons. The association between this lush, feathery grass and lush, feathery throw-pillows on a wipedown banquette had become too firmly embedded in our collective consciousness, purportedly thanks to ‘social media’. Demand had apparently tanked. And yet in lockdown, if you looked at interior design Instagram, as I did for hours and hours at a time, rooms were bedecked with the stuff. Accounts with names like ‘A Pampas Life’ were displaying its sensual curves as if nothing had happened.
I reached out to another niche corner of online horticulture, dried flower Instagram, for answers. Marina Bezgin opened her company, For Love of Pampas, in 2019 in Brooklyn. ‘During COVID, we saw people stuck in their homes eager to decorate their spaces – that’s when we saw the biggest uptick’. But the swinging though? ‘I think probably it was like that in Europe back in the 1970s,’ says Marina. ‘I’m not sure if pampas was ever considered connected with swinging in the USA.’
I resolved to get to the truth, by downloading a huge list of swingers’ clubs from the internet and emailing them all with the simple question: is this true, or not. The answers I received were greatly in tune with my own suspicions.
Vicky of Townhouse Swingers, based on the Wirral, was damning. ‘It may have been a thing in the 1970s, but we don’t rely on obscure foliage to find other swingers. We use the internet.’ Vikki from Le Boudoir Club in London believed it was an urban myth too. I asked her what plants she has at the club. ‘We don’t have real plants or flowers because the venue is rather like a casino and has no natural light. We do have a number of floral displays, mainly orchids, and what we call the Botanical Garden, which is made up of shrubs.’
Having found little confirmation from the British Confederation of Swingers, I decided to take another route of investigation. I knocked on the door of a house that’s near me where a large bush of pampas grass was in full bloom. The leaves of the lower bush rustled in the wind as the owner of the home came to the door. I gave the elderly man who owned the house my story and he nodded ruefully, drying his hands on a tea towel. He had heard the stories, but no, he wasn’t a swinger. Why didn’t he get rid of them? ‘It was there when we moved in and I can’t be bothered trying to dig it out,’ he said, then shrugged. I shrugged back.
