How to be Popular with Your Perennials - and Vice Versa
Planting a garden is a bit like giving a party. You provide the setting, food and drink, and then decide who gets invited, and who gets ejected if they don't behave according to form. Naturally you want the guests to have a good time - but you want to enjoy yourself, too. So one secret to a good party is to invite those people you really love who you can trust to get along with each other (and with you), and who will be completely at ease in the setting you provide for them.
The best way to enjoy your own garden is much the same. Invite only those plants that you truly love, who will thrive in the setting that you offer them. Happy plants are healthy plants - they will not attract many pests and will create few problems. Give them the setting that is best for them and they will reward you a thousand-fold. But watch what happens when you try to force them to play in conditions that don't quite suit them. They sulk and get belligerent, or go all sickly and wan on you. Not only are they no fun - they are a lot of hard work.
And we creaky gardeners cannot afford to use sulky, wan and unhappy plants. So the first and most important thing about being popular with your perennials is only to invite those that will thrive in the setting that you can provide for them, without your having to go to a lot of trouble constantly having to supply them with fresh drinks or pamper them with extra feedings, are casting recklessly about for ways to dim the lights or turn them up higher.
That should be a very strict criterion for all of us when we hit that nursery in spring. If it won't thrive in the conditions you have to offer it, leave that plant on the shelf. (Unless you truly fall in love with it and are prepared to do a lot of extra work keeping it happy.)
Rather than worrying about being popular with our perennials, we really need to ask ourselves what plants could become very popular with us as we increasingly begin to creak through the yard. Plants that are practically trouble free, which don't demand any upkeep other than we choose to give them. Plants that will allow us to have a garden even if we can barely limp through it to admire the flowers.
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