This Year's Favorite Flowers - and a Few that Fizzled
Everyone has their own favorite plants - the tried and true ones that thrive for them year after year. Most of us also have our nemeses - those we want to grow, keep trying to grow - and with which keep failing abysmally.
Tried and true plants tend to also be relatively common. It's hard to fail with hostas and daylilies, peonies, coneflowers, astilbes, geraniums and all the other old familiar faces. That's why they stay familiar.
The nemesis-types may also be fairly common. Lavender was my chief nemesis for a long time, but I kept on trying - long after I had killed it the required three times. I finally got it to grow -far more of it that I really even want at this stage in my garden design - but it is too lovely to remove.
Others still defeat me. I don't do well with bearded irises although most people find them relatively easy. In fact I see them in the yards of people who don't really garden much, looking far happier than they ever do for me. And I've only been partially lucky with cannas. They grow, but never seem to flower for me. That's why I've started concentrating on the ones with colorful leaves.
But we gardeners owe a debt of gratitude to those plants that defeat us. Their very failure gives us empty spaces in the garden - and a chance to try something different.
I got to try more new things than usual this year. Partially this was because I started planting in a few places that I hadn't gardened in before. And partially it was because at the height of last year's drought I evicted every plant I wasn't in love with in order to give what water I could to the ones I treasured. And so this spring I had all kinds of new plants to try - some as permanent residents, and some of the more tender sort that will have to be dug and stored until next year - IF they delight me this year. And many of them are doing exactly that.
Probably the biggest dazzlers in the gardens this summer have been dahlias. I've planted them before - the tall, back of the border types. Inevitably I forgot to stake them until it was too late, and so had to walk around to the back of the bed and peek through the buddleia to see them. Normally I can't bear to cut the flowers in the garden and take away the color and form - but I've cut lots of dahlias because that was the only way to enjoy them.
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