No good or bad plants, just misunderstood ones

What makes a plant good or bad? What if the plants we’ve labeled “bad” only got that reputation because it was grown in the wrong situation?

Ask a gardener about a specific plant and you’re likely to get not just a general description, but at least some cursory thoughts on its garden worthiness, regardless of whether they’ve grown it before or not. It’s reputation — deserved or not — precedes it.

And at least one plantsman thinks that’s wrong. He’s hoping to help remedy this problem of plants being branded as good or bad by writing a perennial reference guide that provides, as Joe Friday said, just the facts.

The guide won’t just include the basic information you might find on a plant label, such the hardiness zones where it will survive and its size, but also its behavior, such as reseeding tendencies or how quickly it might spread by rhizomes. 

Armed with this information, gardeners and designers can make their own decisions about whether a plant is appropriate for a specific space rather than be influenced by the opinions of others. That’s important because plants that might be commonly branded as “bad” can have their place in a garden if grown appropriately.

Golden alexanders (Zizia aurea) is a plant that might benefit from the Joe Friday treatment. It blooms early with yellow umbellifer flowers, attracts a wide range of pollinators and can grow in sun to light shade. It’s also a short-lived perennial that reseeds readily to aggressively, something that might lead some gardeners to classify it as problematic. But those same characteristics might make it well suited to an open area in need of filling in, or an excellent addition to an established garden where seedlings will not outcompete existing plants. On the other hand, it might not be appropriate when planted simultaneously with other perennials that are slow to establish since it will outcompete them.

By the same token, some gardeners may be more tolerant of maintenance than others. For some gardeners, routine editing of a happily spreading plant like blunt mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) or Japanese Anemone may be a small price to pay to have these lovely plants in their gardens. For others, it may be a degree of maintenance that is beyond what they are interested in.

It goes beyond Beth Chatto’s oft-repeated motto of “right plant, right place” to add in right timing, right gardener, right situation. 

At its heart, this compendium of plant characteristics and behaviors is based on the idea that there are no good and bad plants and no plant, be it native or non-native, is better than another on its face.

I don’t envision this book will be a page turner to keep you up at night, but imagine if it held a spot on gardeners’ bookshelves and was on regular loan at public libraries. It could open up a world of plants that gardeners have been missing out on, all because someone, at some point, decided they were “bad.”