Plants I Love

Don't ask me to choose a favorite, I love them all in their own way. But here are some plants that I keep coming back to, again and again.

An unforgiving foundation area under a truculent old holly. We brighten the shade with white leaved perennials: Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost,' Lamium maculatum 'White Nancy,' Japanese Ghost Ferm, and variegated Solomon's Seal.

When Nigella's blooms are done, the show does not stop: otherworldy, alien-looking seed pods emerge to prolong the display. Let them keep seeding, and eventually they will revert to mauves and pinks and purples, in addition to the blues selected so long ago by Miss Jekyll.

At the end of the season, chartreuse leaved salvia. Spires of fire engine red plumes, well nigh six feet tall, fire away in front of an ancient maple grove.

Simple, peaceful, restful: golden Japanese forest grass, thick shiny leaves of European ginger, Ghost Fern.

Memories of gaudy giant purple alliums in the back of bulb catalogs, with a freckle faced little urchin posed next to them to illustrate height, always scared me away from alliums. But, the white variety, with their perfect snowy orbs, lend grace and height to a burgeoning June garden.

An unforgiving southern exposure on a busy downtown street: you need plants that are tough as nails. Paging Knockout roses and lemony yellow tree hibiscus!

Opunta, a perennial cactus native to rocky mountain faces in the ridge and valley section of Pennsylvania, surprise everyone each season with their sunny yellow blooms. Here, they grow through brick and rubble.

As a horticulturist, I know I am supposed to use Latin botanical names. So here is some Kniphofia uvaria. But I am also a folklorist, and you can never beat the traditional common names. So here is some Red Hot Poker. Or Torch Lily. Perfect name, easy plant.

This ancient Clematis 'Nelly Moser' has been climbing up through the canes of an old rambling rose, for more decades than I have been alive, without an ounce of effort or help from me. Nelly shows up every summer and struts her stuff.

Yellow flag iris naturalize in our community garden pond, behind a clump of Baptisia australis, or False Blue Indigo.

I am honored to tend this ancient grove of Japanese maple. Of course they woo you with their spectacular leaf color and graceful form. But as the years go on, I admire their smooth, sinewy trunks all the more.

You will never get more bang for your buck than a $.99 pack of Nigella seeds, or Love in a Mist, as the old ladies called it, from the corner hardware store. It volunteers itself year after year, flowers of blue and of white float above ferny fennel-like foliage.