essential KITSCH
HORTICULTURAL ODDS AND ENDS
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
—Francis Bacon, in The Sunday Telegraph (1964)
Some plants are essential kitsch, amounting to well-placed contradictions, one-offs or oddities that exist merely because the gardener wishes them to. They may or may not be stylish, they may not go with everything (or anything), and growing them might require a greater effort than anything else in the ground. These are plants that you (regardless of your preferences or tastes) grow simply because you have to—they are like hat pins or bumper stickers or collector mugs, tchotchkes that follow you home, that commemorate a feeling, an instinct, or some former gardening experience. As a result, some gardens are kitschy, not artful assemblages of thriving plants but rather collections of one truly weird, funky thing after another. Professional horticulturists and expert gardeners often have gardens like this; we admire them not for what they actually grow but for the intensity of the passion required for such a pursuit.
In the plant world, geeky is sexy, though let’s be real—not everyone gardens for geekiness. But sometimes you need geeky, something weird or quirky planted for conversation (even if you don’t have to have all five and join the fan club too). Beyond conversation, kitschy plants have a way of coloring beyond the lines; they are at once slightly mysterious and highly revealing, expressions of a garden’s (and as a result a gardener’s) many-layered personality. Kitschy plants are the very essence of the best gardens, the hidden gems tucked away and treasured, the devilishly decadent details.
In my teenage years, I had a vine fetish, which is to say I planted annual and perennial vines on anything standing upright. At some point, though, my fondness for traditional morning glories like ‘Heavenly Blue’ and ‘Grandpa Ott’s’ gave way to the single-minded pursuit of one of the finest morning glories ever—the antique, choice, and consequently rare ‘Sunrise Serenade’, a double-flowered variety of the common Ipomoea purpurea with fluted fuchsia petals stacked within each other. If you have space for just one morning glory—well, I think my endorsement is clear. A common weed to some, this treasure is worth tracking down.
If I’ve learned anything growing up as a plant geek, it’s that all my favorite gardens (and any of the best gardens I’ve ever been to) have at least one thing that makes you stop and go, “What the …?” Yes, just like that garish lamp stand (like the one in my living room that nobody but me adores) or that cheap, ugly painting you refuse to part with, some plants will surely cause a double take—the proverbial “what the hell” is that doing here? Every garden needs at least one; something that’s going to turn heads, stop traffic, and inspire conversation.
Seashore mallow (Kosteletzkya virginica).
Nowadays, style-conscious people don’t so much plant lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) as they inherit it. The flowers have a delightful perfume, of course, but overall the plant is obnoxious and unruly, even if it colonizes dark, shady corners few other things do. There are redeeming leaves in their midst, though—a whole assortment of striped variegates like ‘Vic Pawlowski’s Gold’ that, while a tad slow to multiply, offer a refreshing and altogether interesting alternative to the mass of green paddles otherwise associated with the genus.
On the opposite end of the horticultural spectrum in so many ways, seashore mallow (Kosteletzkya virginica), at nearly five feet tall in flower, ascends airily into the garden’s stratosphere. A regarded native of the Southeast, this hollyhock relative of brackish swamps and backwater bayous betrays its homeland, thriving well into zone 5 and above in perfectly normal garden soils (though it wouldn’t mind the wetter spots either). Relatively unknown in the garden world, it should rather be treasured for its bevies of five-petaled, cotton candy–colored, miniature-hibiscus flowers.
Cynanchum ascyrifolium.
Maybe it’s a biennial. Maybe it’s a short-lived perennial. It doesn’t really matter. This spectral member of the bellflower family is about as kitschy, if not spooky awesome, as it comes. Michauxia campanuloides is anything but a generic bellflower. As it came into my view during a late summer visit to Dancing Oaks Nursery in Monmouth, Oregon, I thought I’d come across a flowering apparition in the guise of a passionflower. Eerily topping out at five feet tall, its inflorescences drip pendent white flowers that look more wraith-like than floral. All seven species of Michauxia are native to the Levant; the genus was named in honor of French botanist and explorer André Michaux, who had made extensive collections in the Middle East, among them this hitherto unknown bellflower, from which species his fellow botanist and countryman Charles-Louis L’Héritier de Brutelles created the genus in 1788. But I digress—how is something so creepy cool so absent from modern gardens? This native of Lebanon and Israel is hardy to zone 5 (and often underrated in hardiness), thrives in clay and rocky soils, loves full sun, freaks people out, and reseeds a little when it’s all over with. How can you go wrong?
Few plants with such chic, ethereal flowers are as unsought as Cynanchum ascyrifolium, even as its cousin Stephanotis makes perennial appearances as a component of wedding bouquets and related regalia. It’s versatile and adaptable—sun to part shade, poor to rich soils. Clumps thrive and persist for years, each season returning with verve and whirling stalks of flowers as they grow to an ultimate size of a few feet tall and wide.
Iris ×norrisii ‘Summer Candy’ is proving to be a tough, dependable bloomer in a wide range of circumstances.
LOOKS LIKE AN IRIS?
Plants manage to turn heads for many reasons. In a particular season, they might be unexpected, like the candy lilies, vesper irises, and blackberry lilies—all irises (in spite of those common names) that bloom in August, the last month anyone thinks of when they think of irises. While blackberry lilies (Iris domestica) have long frequented the sidewalks and fence borders of American gardens, the derivative hybrids between them and vesper irises (I. dichotoma) have only recently caught favor. Surely I jest, but these smashing candy lilies (as they’re unfortunately known) or I. ×norrisii (named for Sam Norris, the originating hybridizer who I like to fancy I’m distantly related to) remind me of those ring pops that every second grader had in the ’90s. They’re possibly the first group of plants we’ll have to market based on what time of day you’re home—some bloom during the work day and others bloom at night, which explains why the geeks in the know were a little slow to get the ball rolling until now. The variation in flower color, shape, and size is quite simply vast—from the jewel-tone Dazzler series originated by Bluebird Nursery’s Harlan Hamernik, including the aptly named ‘Sangria’, to the floriferous ‘Summer Candy’, one of ten or so new hybrids from Darrell Probst. In moisture-retentive soils, these candy lilies sail through droughts unscathed and in drier-than-normal soils in wet years, they’ll colonize with abundance. Keep in mind that while each flower lasts for only one day, each plant can be laden with as many as several hundred flowers. Vigorous selections will reward you with weeks of summer color, the flowers floating in air like a diorama of paper butterflies, in the months you least expect to enjoy an iris.
Moraea ramosissima offers evergreen foliage and sweet-scented flowers on hip-pocket tall stems when grown in moist soils.
Obtaining and raising stellar members of Moraea is worth the effort. This iris-ish genus has loads of ornamental promise, if only someone would hike the Drakensberg in South Africa, collect the hardiest forms, and distribute them to someone with a set of tweezers. In the trade, you’ll find a few, mostly with cautious labels like “for collectors only.” Some of these require some diligence, no doubt. But others are plenty forgiving and shouldn’t suffer because someone thinks you aren’t green enough in the thumbs to grow them. On trips to the West Coast, I’ve run into M. huttonii and M. ramossisima, both very eligible bachelorettes of the chic garden scene. Hardy in both cases to at least zone 7, with reports of M. huttonii persisting in reliably snowy winter climates in zone 6, these South African natives thrive in consistently moist soils, filling out into three- to four-foot plants with graceful, gladiolus-like foliage. Scapes of intricately patterned yellow flowers form in late spring and summer and, depending on the water supply, might flower steadily throughout the summer, before taking a nap. In mild winter climates these are evergreen. In the hinterlands of the northern zones, you can either pray they’ll survive outside, try it, and kill a few for the cause, or consider a container garden (which you could easily overwinter in the garage).
Plantago major ‘Purple Perversion’ takes on the best color in bright light, its shady nativity notwithstanding.
Yes, the theme among these species is yellow, but don’t get haughty if you don’t like yellow. The so-called peacock moraeas sport flowers with feathery spots that mimic beetles; biologists believe the spots entice real beetles to slip in at midnight for a naughty tryst and in the ensuing fumble, they manage to pollinate the flowers—seduction at nature’s finest hour. Among these, Moraea villosa, M. neopavonia, and M. tulbaghensis will surely give your head a spin. As container gems, they’re not difficult, though I may just be saying that to console myself (I couldn’t grow them in the garden, as they aren’t hardy). Drainage and a good baking summer will do the trick.
PLANTAGOS, OR THE WEEDS THAT WEREN’T
My friend, plant breeder and nurseryman Joseph Tychonievich, recently released an uber-electric version of a less-than-electric plant—plantain (Plantago), the leafy hosta-esque weed that you shred with the lawnmower on passes through the shadiest corners of your yard. As much as you might hate plantains, there are plenty of reasons to keep reading. The best is Joseph’s ‘Purple Perversion’. Tastelessly alliterative, it accurately conjures an image of a plant that dares to be purple when few others will. Plantago major ‘Purple Perversion’ came to life from a controlled cross between two varieties—‘Rubrifolia’ (which has sort of purple foliage) and ‘Frills’ (which unsurprisingly has frilly leaves)—and with any luck will earn a righteous following of groupies who want to plant it and watch it reseed into a plush mat undertow, lapping at hostas in the shade ghetto. There’s little point in enunciating cultural details—it’s a damn purple weed. Just dig a hole (or let one reseed from the pot—they do come true from seed!).
There is at least one other reason to love plantains: ‘Bowles Variety’, which accessorizes its spindly, whipcord flower stalks with large, leafy bracts. Think of it as the horticultural equivalent of a crazy hat at a royal wedding. Plus, the flowers of this variety alone could have more fans on Facebook than Glenn Beck. Seriously, by now, you’ve got to be wondering how afflicted a plantsman has to be to name, cultivate, and produce strains of damn lawn weeds, with purple foliage no less. Genius!
QUIRKY SUCCULENTS
I would be remiss if I didn’t include some succulents in this parade of oddities. Succulents are all the rage these days—they’re hip, retro throwbacks to the houseplant craze, embraced outdoors for their striking textures and rugged dependability and indoors for their everlasting funk and charm.
The darling little dunce’s cap (Orostachys boehmeri) came to my garden via a plant swap with my crazy succulent collector friend Matthew Morrow. A monocarp, this species (and others like it including O. iwarenge) reseeds politely, ensuring a stable colony graces the garden scene on an annual basis with Seussical flowers, seafaring foliage, and actinomorphic rosettes. I don’t think I would garden without it now. I’m sort of at a loss to elaborate on a plant so effortlessly handsome. At home in a scree garden, trough, or any location with ample drainage and sunny exposure, this petite chap, though doomed to sport his dunce-capped flowers, takes the cake for botanical entertainment.
Manfreda virginica.
Bukiniczia cabulica.
Whole books, websites, and clubs exist in admiration of the familiar hen and chicks or houseleeks (Sempervivum), which many of us came to know through some cliché colony spilling out of an old boot or shoe on our grandmother’s front step. We’ve come a long way since then. Though our grandmothers dismissed their flowers, we now appreciate these pink stars as a rare offing of a colony well established and proliferating.
I can’t keep up with the names for a certain peculiar little succulent. I first encountered it as the smooth-flowing Aeoniopsis cabulica, since changed to Bukiniczia cabulica. It has no easy-to-recall common name, so I’ve dubbed it miniature rock cabbage (of all things, it’s actually a plumbago relative). This is one of those plants so bewilderingly fabulous, you’ll wonder how you’ve gotten along without it for this long. With speckled and splattered aquamarine foliage held in tidy rosettes, this Pakistani monocarp tops my list of essential rock garden weeds, whether grown intentionally between rocks or allowed to wander into the gravel paths around your garden. It’s a reseeder when it gets around to blooming (which it does only once, usually after a couple of years of growth), sprays of pinky things that you probably won’t notice at first. Leave them even if you don’t admire them; its well-mannered seediness ensures a constant supply of it in the garden for many years, even after the original plants have prospered to the end of their life cycle.
When I think of weird plants, I think of Manfreda. Where to start—plants in this genus sort of look like agaves, with straps of succulent, rippled foliage, but they’re not (though they curiously hybridize with them). Botanists get into fisticuffs over what family they belong in (don’t mess with plant genealogy and expect everyone to just sleep through the revisions). The flowers have to be some of the strangest you’ll ever see, looking like the frayed ends of a camel hair paintbrush.
Manfredas are dryland plants, preferring sunny conditions with drier soils and are generally best suited for gardens in zones 7 through 9. In a warm climate, they’re essential kitsch. My first encounter with them came in the form of Manfreda virginica, a native of Ozarks glades, with eerie green flowers and often red-splattered, succulent foliage. Bewilderingly, these insignificant flowers (nobody would ever call them runway divas) emit the strangest, spicy fragrance, which emanates from five- to six-foot-tall flower stalks. Truly, truly bizarre and the only member of the genus with any real hardiness—zone 5 or 6.
In the splattered leaves department, other manfredas fill similar roles. Manfreda longifolia (sometimes placed in Polianthes) has nicely speckled foliage with toothy edges, and the flowers of this native of Texas and Mexico are some of the prettiest of the agave clan—pinkish stars that burn out to red. And oh, the smell! Several intergeneric hybrids exist between Manfreda and Polianthes, most of which are collector novelties and not widely available. The results? Larger flowers in colors ranging from pink to near black, that cloying fragrance, and even hardiness to zone 6b. If these hybrids get into commercial production, they’ll be perfect for a dry garden near the back door, where you can appreciate the details while growing the plants in superb drainage.
One of the more popular of these bizarre agave-ish plants, Manfreda undulata ‘Chocolate Chips’ boasts pronounced chocolate-splattered, rippled leaves that even casual gardeners recognize as something special. A Carl Schoenfeld plant from Yucca Do Nursery, ‘Chocolate Chips’ has surprising hardiness despite its Mexican origins, with some reports of thriving, flowering plants as far north as zone 6b. In midsummer on established plants, NASA-inspired flowers blast into orbit atop a three-foot solitary stalk.
The kitschiest gardens always have containers, maybe because the kitschiest gardeners always need one more space to tuck in a few of their collected treasures. Whether you garden on an expansive lot or on a balcony, containers are invaluable in the modern garden—in one instance for relief of scale, in another for the relief of having a place to plant the latest round of impulse buys. While theoretically anything can be grown in a container (even if not for very long or very well), in practice, there are just some plants that look classiest when spilling from ceramics, faux bois, or some repurposed object screaming for a second life in horticultural theater. Container gardens can preview other elements of your garden—dramatic textures, exotic specimens, and the like—but they certainly don’t have to be anything more than a vessel for well-planted odds and ends.
I fell in love with Griffinia liboniana the first time I saw it—a Brazilian bulb with succulent, plastic leaves and feathery blue flowers held on slender ascendant stems that couldn’t have looked better even if it wasn’t in an unassuming terra cotta pot. In the northern hemisphere, this regular of the tropical understory will thrive only in a container, set out on the patio for the summer and brought into the heat of the house in winter. The seeming effortlessness of one container of G. liboniana on your outdoor dining set will surely convince your friends that Martha has nothing on you. Move it around the garden for photoshoot-quality styling from almost any angle.
Eucomis vandermerwei ‘Octopus’ growing in a terra cotta container on the front steps of garden designer Troy Marden’s Nashville home.
In this trough growing on my friend Mike Kintgen’s front doorstep in Denver, two plants clamored for my attention—first, the soothing blue flowers of Eritrichium and second, the comical claws of Lamium garganicum, a tiny cousin of the familiar spotted deadnettle (L. maculatum) that’s probably pillaging your shady backyard while you read this.
Then of course there are the pineapple lilies (Eucomis), which seem to be closing in on the apex of the botanical clock—hitting the stride of their popularity for their tropical textures and loudmouth performances in the heat of summer. In general, they come in three versions: big, small, and weird. Among the big, E. pole-evansii takes the cake for her colossal, stately columns of green—green leaves, green stalks, green flowers, green fruits—measuring in at just under five feet tall. There are plenty of smaller eucomis if you’re feeling pinched for space but still want a generous dose of South African charm. The leaves of ‘Glow Sticks’ from Terra Nova Nurseries are gently ruffled; they emerge apricot and age to something resembling peach bisque. ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ is another talked-about favorite, growing only twenty inches tall but sparkling in, well, burgundy, merlot, and a range of purples, depending on the time of day. In containers, it’s one of my favorites, even if it never stalks up its starry pink flowers.
And then the weird. ‘Dark Star’, a seeming Star Wars set prop and sea urchin hybrid, is either downright cool or creepy, depending on your personality. Spikes of pink flowers appear in midsummer, which tone down the weird, a little (or enhance the punk?). ‘Octopus’, a selection of the naturally dwarf Eucomis vandermerwei, could be the weirdest of the bunch if polling tracked such trends. Barely six inches tall and up to a foot wide, about the only place to appreciate something quite so diminutive and obscure is in a container. Had I known of the existence of this plant as a child, I would never have needed a pet. The flowers up the ante on cuteness and with its vigor, you’ll have a living bouquet of them in one season.
If tropicals don’t inspire you or fit your niche, why not carve out a rock (or fashion something similar with hypertufa) and plant some alpines? Hypertufa troughs—molded amalgamations of Portland cement, peat moss, and perlite—make perfect homes for a whole palette of plants that would challenge many of us to grow in the open garden.
On an herbal note, scented geraniums, long the pampered prizes of herb collectors, are poised for a renaissance. After all, these aren’t your typical front-porch red geraniums. Scented geraniums have obviously tactile qualities—flagrant stroking, touching, and caressing is encouraged, if only to indulge in the phenolic phenomena exuded from their variously shaped leaves. The names they trade under seem more descriptive than qualified cultivar names or replace the latter altogether. My present fascination with them is two-fold—they are a horticultural constant, the perfect plant to engage with during summer and winter months (whatever the temperatures of the beverage, scented geraniums are natural companions). In summer they reside on the deck, patio, or balcony ledge. In winter, they call the windowsill home. Consider Pelargonium crispum ‘Cy’s Sunburst’, a variegated form of the familiar fingerbowl lemon-scented geranium. With fascinatingly curly leaves, adpressed to one another along rigid, ascendant stalks, ‘Cy’s Sunburst’ cries out for inspection via fingertips. Discovered by Cyrus Hyde of Well-Sweep Herb Farm in Port Murray, New Jersey, this relatively new cultivar demands greater use as container specimen, collected if also coddled, even though it’s a cinch to grow.
I was first struck by Pelargonium sidoides on a trip to California, its long-stemmed aerial flowers cast down over the path, inviting scrutiny and admiration. In a patio container in my own garden a few years later, I staged it against a textural background of midsummer green for unhindered, up-close-and-personal staring. Even when not in flower, which is a rare few weeks a year if given enough water and light, its minted foliage maintains a crisp silver ruffle and spicy fragrance when crushed.
Cyclamen coum ‘Something Magic’.
A thousand or so garden plants have flowers so small, you’ll have to slow down and lean in for a closer look. People in a hurry call these a waste of time, and they’ll probably keel over from a heart attack in a hedge of barberries outside their office building—a sad fate. Small plants cause us to savor the garden, beckoning us to kneel or peer in appreciation. A garden shouldn’t scream all the time but instead embrace the contrast between big and small, coarse and fine. Little flowers and tiny leaves belong in the intimate nooks and crannies of the garden—alongside paths, for example—or in any accessible spot, so you can appreciate their fineries as up close and personal as you like. But no matter the details, they should be worth the effort, packing a punch despite their size, whether visually, texturally, or olfactorily.
Take, for instance, shooting stars (Dodecatheon). The shooting stars of mountain streamside fame deserve recognition for their spring flowers, which—like their common name—last only a moment. In droves, they are essential details; as singles, they’d be lost in the robust bustle of any normal spring garden. Or consider cyclamen, which collectors coo for, prized for their pewter and jade patterned leaves. Depending on the species, these come complete with little flowers in either spring or fall. Cyclamen coum ‘Something Magic’, a zone-4-hardy selection, may carpet the garden with pink flowers in late winter, but its foliage rivals the falling leaves for interest and color. Many nurseries have good strains of C. coum and C. hederifolium for sale.
FRITILLARIES
Several years ago as an intern at Better Homes & Gardens tasked with de-accessioning the garden department’s library, I stumbled upon a monograph about fritillaries and proceeded to jump head first into a genus that I knew practically nothing about. In the end I killed most that I acquired that summer, one of many horticultural lessons from the school of hard knocks. In my overzealousness to get my hands on as many as I could find, I overplanted the garden with them, many in conditions that weren’t much to their liking. Don’t mistake me—most are not difficult to grow; they just require someone with half a brain and five minutes of forethought to plant them. Here’s five minutes and two cents’ worth about the species that survived my initial torture and that I’ve since come to adore.
Fritillaries offer a little something for everyone. If you’re a rock gardener and want to grow the rarest, strangest thing you can get your hands on, there are plenty of species to try your luck with (that’s an afterhours conversation we can save for later, but to get a head start, Google Fritillaria striata and F. sewerzowii and put on some mood music). If you want some dangling bells of weird awesomeness without too much hassle, a few species offer a solid beginning.
Fritillaria meleagris is probably the most available fritillary apart from the giant imperial fritillary (F. imperialis), showing up in small bins and dimly lit corners of the garden center or big box store. Don’t be scared: even if it looks like a snake’s head, it doesn’t bite—too hard. Dangly and egg-sized, these flowers come in white, green, and burgundy, often with substantial checkering or tessellation (use that one in a crossword, Will Shortz!). They’re so shamefully simple to grow, it’s a wonder we don’t see them in gardens more often. Another great bulb for the shade garden.
Lebanese fritillary (Fritillaria elwesii) is a good case study for the magnitude of “matter” found within the fritillaries. Grape-shaped green flowers often sport exterior black markings that sweep out to flaring edges, with occasional hints of gold in the throat that make me weak in the knees. Plant a few clumps of these between your daffodils, and your neighbors will really think you’ve got some attitude. It’s a vigorous grower, but rarely weedy, and doesn’t mind a little shade; after all, we wouldn’t want your emerging hosta spears to be lonely.
One of the most perennial fritillaries I’ve cultivated is Fritillaria pallidiflora. These chartreuse to primrose-colored flowers make happy companions to almost any spring-flowering perennial or bulb, meaning you can plop them in with effortless precision and show up the Joneses and Martha in the process. Toss in a few hellebores and some Virginia bluebells (Mertensia) for good measure, and you’ve made art. Each candelabra-like stem boasts three to five or more flowers that age to pink-blushed shades of parchment. Pretty as they are, don’t smell them and thank me later, unless you have a penchant for acrid odors. In the woodland garden, they’re a surefire hit, thriving in humusy soils amid liberally planted colonies of Dicentra eximia or Corydalis. They’ll certainly tolerate worse, but you’ll sacrifice a few flowers in the process. But even after tradeoffs for soil, what a spectacular plant to jazz up any number of April-barren spots in your garden.
THE BASTARD SAXIFRAGES
Mitella and Tellima, the anagrammed saxifragaceous cousins of coral bells, have languished backstage while Heuchera has gone on parade. While these genera don’t pack the punch of the coral bells’ wildly marked leaves, their flowers are worth a look, especially if you’re looking for something a little more subdued.
Mitella will probably never get any respect in a fast-paced world, appreciated instead by those with heads firmly affixed in the botanical clouds. But tiny or not, these flowers are damn cool. Hanging from rocky cliffs in woodlands across the eastern United States, these ephemerals announce the arrival of spring each year with bottlebrushes of little white flakes that have charmed me since my early college days. Escaping to a local state park in early April each year to avoid real studying, I instead studied the subtleties of M. diphylla foliage, occasionally encountering forms flushed with a bit of bronze, conjuring thoughts of what it must have been like for early plant breeders to delve into the colors lurking in coral bell leaves. Since those discoveries on rainy afternoons, I have embraced these native groundcovers as chic filler in my shade garden, planting them in abundance at the margins of hostas, epimediums, and hellebores, the supporting cast to showier stars. They don’t last long, but who cares. It’s one more excuse to plant something else to take their place.
Ranked by magnitude of flower power, Tellima grandiflora bests many coral bells, flurrying the late spring garden with columns of suspended white snowflakes that age to pink. Up close, the flowers have noticeably frilly edges and are worth a minute or two of close investigation.
LITTLE HARDY ORCHIDS
The word “orchid” scares the hell out of some people. This amazing family of plants so often has the undeserved reputation of being hard to grow, fussy, and exclusively tropical. Fear not—a cadre of hardy terrestrial orchids awaits horticultural celebration. But don’t confuse these orchids’ raffish appearance with the trumped-up, tropical flowers of supermarket fame—these aren’t orchids by generic definition.
Goodyera pubescens (rattlesnake plantain) is a great place to start. It’s mostly grown for its startling ivory-veined leaves and not for its small, white, fly-pollinated flowers, but who’s keeping track? Forming a groundcover in a few years, this native orchid of the Southeast loves shade and a moist humusy soil. Aplectrum hyemale (puttyroot orchid) enjoys similar conditions and shares a range with the latter. Brownish flowers with hints of green and violet stippling populate the ends of foot-high flower stalks. Both are best appreciated en masse; leave them to colonize and form arrays.
Nicer still are the lady’s tresses, the late summer- and autumn-blooming members of the genus Spiranthes, known for their fragrance and spiraled stalks of ivory flowers. Small and white or not, the fragrance of these surprise-you-when-you’re-least-expecting-it orchids is enough to plant them out in droves. By September when it rolls around to flowering, I’ve long forgotten S. cernua ‘Chadd’s Ford’ from the year before. But like spears of asparagus, the flower stalks push up through the leaves and ajuga mat, offering a brief floral display akin to a quick bite of dessert after a satiating meal. In autumn, new flowers are simply the best, particularly when they smell this sweetly good. I’ve abused mine in the garden for years, planting them near rocks in dry shade, in the shade of monkshoods (Aconitum) and yellow waxy bells (Kirengeshoma) and tickled underfoot by sedges hell-bent on colonizing the backyard. They haven’t missed a fall yet.
In my own gardens, I’ve always tried to foster serendipity when possible. Serendipity with a horticultural bent is the unintended consequence of growing living things, because let’s face it: plants—whether cultivated in the garden or free-flowering in the wild—have evolved means to migrate. I’ve always tended to appreciate reseeding; it makes me think plants are situated enough to spread themselves, albeit occasionally with unwelcome vengeance. Sometimes, the best ideas just crop up in the garden, right? Certainly in the wild, if a plant flowers and sets seed, those seeds have at least a passing chance of germinating and beginning a new generation. But the garden, just like the wild, is an environment with its own mechanics. What might reseed with vengeance in your garden might very well languish in solitariness in mine. Regardless, in some circumstances some plants will invariably become weedy. It’s up to you to decide if that’s such a bad thing or not. If you see reseeding as a nuisance, you might scan this section as a recommended list of plants to avoid—like any repentant soul, you know it’s easier to just avoid temptation than to correct sin. If you perceive reseeding as a gift, these odds and ends are a shopping list. As Ralph Waldo Emerson cheerily professed, a weed is “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”
PURPLE AND PLUSH
Violets charmed more than a few of us as kids, springing up in turf in purple posies, the angst of anyone striving for the monocultured, manicured lawn. Those little pips were the weedy Viola sororia, the common blue violet that some of us picked and presented with pride to our mothers on her honored day. But we’re big kids now, and as grown-ups, there are a whole lot of classy violets that our gardens shouldn’t be without. And unsurprisingly, they’re a cinch to grow.
If you want a little plant that packs some punch, spruce up the shade with Viola walteri ‘Silver Gem’. Discovered at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, this native Appalachian violet may share space with your feet but deserves all the attention of something staring you in the face. Why? Frosted silver foliage, which never seems to look bad, even in droughts, is why. The flowers are the usual fare—little purple things from early spring through fall, reblooming sporadically until frost.
With your hosta ghetto successfully gentrified, you can’t forget that sun-baked pile of rocks in the front yard that you call a rock garden. You have three violet options here—Viola pedata (bird’s foot violet), V. egglestonii (glade violet), and V. corsica (Corsican violet). These three species are more likely to die from your kindness than from neglect. In the case of the first two, they occur natively on limestone crests, suffering through miserably high pH soils in the company of sedges and rattlesnakes. Seriously, give them a rocky fissure, some pebbles, and a little water to get established and you’re on your way. Once established you can hope they’ll reseed. The flowers of V. pedata are more than worth a little trouble, ranging in color patterns from zippy bicolors to bold selfs. Viola egglestonii forms mounds of attractive, dissected foliage with traditional purple flowers usually less variable than V. pedata. Viola corsica comes as close as any on this list to epitomizing a pansy in perennial form. Its sheer floriferousness is mind-blowing—in many climates you can expect at least six months of semi-continuous flowering, with generous shows in the spring and fall when nights are cool. Unlike the other two rock garden options, it appreciates a tad more water and a bit richer soil—cheap prerequisites for an A-list plant.
If pandas and teddy bears make you all warm and fuzzy, why not plant a garden with fuzzy bells worth petting? If ever you were told not to touch plants in the garden, ignore that advice and take mine: it’s absolutely okay to play with your plants. They won’t mind. In fact one of the singular reasons to grow pasqueflowers (Pulsatilla) is for the tactile satisfaction of their silky flowers and puffy seedheads. The genus Pulsatilla is a classic among rock gardeners and also a favorite of botanists for taxonomic target practice: its forty-some species, which offer tussocks of anemone-like flowers cloaked in a super-soft pubescence rivaling the plushest wool, are sometimes lumped in with Anemone. Double, semi-double, red, purple, gray, yellow, and white hardly begin to describe the menu available. Pulsatilla patens (prairie crocus) is one of my favorites and the harbinger of spring in shortgrass prairies and meadows across the midsection of the continent. It’s incredibly cold hardy, often weathering through late freezes and cold snaps without damage. In the garden any of the pulsatillas, including the more common P. vulgaris, are just as happy in average soils at the edge of borders or beds as they are between stones, making company with nearby daffodils or crocuses on their spring-bound voyage. Keep drainage in mind though—you don’t want soaked or (worse yet) rotten pasqueflowers. Hardiness runs in the family, and pasqueflowers often weather through late freezes and cold snaps without injury. If you’re in search of something funky, seek out the lemon lime P. aurea or the plush burgundy P. rubra ssp. hispanica.
A FEW ANNUALS FOR GOOD MEASURE
The first plant I recall reseeding like it owned the place was probably money plant (Lunaria annua), an old-fashioned biennial that seems to have fallen out of favor over time. I can’t understand why—to this day, nearly everyone who visits my garden asks for a few “coins” to start their own patch. It reseeded like Genghis Khan conquered Asia—ruthlessly and with vindictive determination. But I didn’t mind. In spring, the purple or white cruciform flowers brightened up the cottage garden, and even in years when the rest of the garden didn’t seem to come along like I’d hoped, those happily virulent biennials held on. As biennials—plants that live a two-part life cycle, spending the first year in leaf and the second and final year in flower—their ferocity was easily forecasted by the degree to which they carpeted the ground the year before flowering, and if I didn’t approve of their numbers, they pulled easily. As a plant known better to 19th-century gardening journals than 21st-century gardeners, it’s had more than a few notable cultivars over the years. The distinctive ‘Rosemary Verey’, named for its discoverer, the venerable British garden designer, is about as punk as the lot gets—lacquered purple foliage with specks of green sassily complement neon violet flowers. If there is such a thing as “traditional” variegation, you can find varieties of money plant with white-splashed green foliage and white flowers, usually with a name like ‘Variegata Alba’ or something similar (multiple names happen, okay?). On a scale of edginess, the look is brazen, but not ballsy. ‘Pennies in Bronze’ offers the show its name implies. Purse-worthy pennies replace tan, translucent coins at maturity, aging from green to shades of copper and bronze that scintillate in the evening sun. Nothing rivals the effect.
California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) come in a wild assortment of colors, readily available from finer seed dealers who’ve made the effort to sort them into strains. Nothing beats these blaring orange petals arising from marine green foliage.
At some point in college I fell in love with simple, carefree California poppies (Eschscholzia californica). I hauled out half a dozen packets and gleefully cast the seeds about my new scree garden. The colors ranged from buttery cream to wild rose and of course the usual bright yellows and oranges. Grown from various mixes I’d picked up at some end-of-season sale and stashed for another year, these emblematic poppies bloomed from mid-May through the first hard freeze. Native throughout the western United States, these poppies have graced gardens for nearly two centuries. By any measure, they’re harmless weeds, technically perennials but behaving like annuals, keen to reseed and reinstate themselves with verve even where they shouldn’t grow. If you don’t like where they land, they pull out with remarkable ease. There’s otherwise not much to say about a plant so familiar and well known, except that annual reinstallations keep your populations thriving with jolts of new color—harbingers of season-long happiness.
It seems that flowering tobaccos (Nicotiana) are on the cusp of a modern renaissance and thankfully so, given the catalog of choices available to gardeners. At one point in horticultural history, gardeners could count on encountering N. alata each spring, in its various color forms in packs at the garden center. These carefree flowerers have given way to more select forms and species of antique provenance. Passed along and preserved in heirloom circles, many of these species and cultivars enjoyed acclaim in yesteryears only to slip from fad to forgotten—cue a list of N. sylvestris, N. langsdorfii, and even N. rustica, which fine garden plants are popularly available from many heirloom seed producers. The former, beloved for its curvaceous, drooping white flowers, is starkly different from the other two, which have smaller, pendent flowers in green and yellow, respectively. But in the spirit of antique flowers, N. glutinosa offers some of the loveliest, even if it takes some imagination to believe it’s actually a flowering tobacco. Its flower, while pendent, more closely resembles a campanula blushed in rosy peachy tints. Like the rest, though, it’s weedily painless to grow, perfect to fill space and time in a variety of garden niches. A newer species recently described from Brazil, N. mutabilis, has been championed by leading garden designers thrilled with its towering, four- to five-foot-tall architecture and abundant flowers, blushed pink at first and then aging to white.
