The Imperfect Gardener

by Adina Sara

What's in a Name?

Lately, I've been forgetting the names of my favorite plants. Coreopsis and ceanothus keep getting interchanged, for obvious reasons, and although I have erigeron (also known as aspen daisies) sprawling along my walkway, the name keeps slipping off my tongue and is never there when I need it.

"What's that?" asks a visitor to my garden, pointing to the spray of white flowers that covers the brick wall, and I turn into a stammering fool. "Wait," I say, "It starts with an E," while the visitor, unimpressed, moves on to smell the old familiar rose.

I took a class in plant identification once. For the final exam, the teacher passed out an assortment of leaves, and we were supposed to name them cerastium tomentosum, ligularia, oenethera missourensis spelled correctly, to boot. For a few short weeks, I felt like an expert.

While it is important to learn the names of the plants you love, it is just as important to know why you love them. A particular color, shape, sprawling pattern, and time of bloom can be achieved by any number of wonderful plants; and to get attached to a particular name is to miss out on all kinds of surprising alternatives.

It is because I could not remember the name ceanothus that I ended up with solanum jasminoides (potato vine), which covers my back fence with a generous supply of blue flowers most of the year. The nurseryman patiently tapped his foot when I asked, "Do you have any...," unable to remember what I came for.

"What does it look like?" he asked, and then introduced me to a host of hardy, blue flowering perennial shrubs, ceanothus, plumbago, campanula, but it was the solanum that caught my eye, towering over them all with delicate blue flower clusters.

It was in this way also that I stumbled upon melianthus major, a magnificent giant of a plant with foot-long red spiked flowers that attracts a brilliant yellow goldfinch every spring. For the rest of the year it provides a dramatic backdrop of zigzagged gray-green leaves. I had gone to the nursery specifically looking for, well, I can't remember the name.

A friend recently bought a home in the area. The previous owner provided her with a notebook filled with the Latin and common name of every plant in the garden, along with date of planting, soil requirements, etc. I was so envious. I wish someone would do that for my garden. The little white identification tags that I carefully put in place invariably get washed away, and I'm not really sure if the bush with the delicate lemon-yellow blooms is evening primrose or coreopsis. It looks like evening primrose, but the tag says coreopsis, but I'm pretty sure that plant died last winter. I call it the lemon bush, and it doesn't seem to mind a bit.

Bulb Time

No October gardening article is complete without some mention of bulbs. I have only one piece of advice for bulb planters: However many bulbs you think are enough, plant triple that amount. It has taken me 25 years to figure that one out. Nothing sadder than a single daffodil here and there, a couple of stray freesias bobbing around, a flopping gladiola looking as if it took the wrong turn. More, when it comes to bulbs, is always better.

Plant Exchange

Melianthus major cuttings are always available from my garden easy to transplant, and able to cover a large area, sun or shade. It seems to be indestructible. E-mailimperfectgardens\@cs.com if you are interested.

Also, contact elizcall\@earthlink.net if you want some of her dwarf plumbago, a low-growing perennial with intense blue flowers, blooming from midsummer to late fall. Come spring, she is also offering some baby clary sage plants, a 3-4' drought-hardy biennial with spiked blue flowers and balsam-perfumed leaves a dramatic addition to a summer garden.

Help keep the gardener's exchange alive with your Metro neighbors by requesting or offering plants. And spread the word.