Happy Plants = Good Plants?
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Happy Plants = Good Plants?
- From: t*@eddy.u-net.com (Tim Longville)
- Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 20:25:52 GMT
I'm with Cyndi 100% on this one. (Hello to The Sunflower Sisters, too!
- a pleasant piece of serendipitous synchronicity...) If a plant likes
*me*, I'm prepared to like *it*. To hell or the compost heap with
purism ('I only grow certified Mediterraneans'), plant-snobbery ('I
only grow the really unusual') and plant-masochism ('I only grow the
really difficult'). And hurrah for the pleasures of the garden which
sustains - and to an extent designs - itself.
Not altogether off the subject: I second David's praise for Hebe
buxifolia. That's just the sort of plant I like - demanding absolutely
nothing from the gardener (though it won't object to the occasional
morsel of food or even, if the mood takes you, to a stylishly
geometric and formal haircut, supposing you don't mind losing most of
the flowers) and giving a gentle, solid, understated evergreen
presence to the garden year after year after year. The old-fashioned
British abbreviation of 'comfortable' to 'comfy' suits it perfectly:
it's a *comfy* plant. Here, BTW, it's one of those hebes which
self-seeds with gay abandon: I have several growing in drystone walls
and one (which can't have read the textbooks) even out of the
limestone mortar of an old Victorian brick one.
Tim Longville
