Another perspective on the garden

In July, Tamara of Chickadee Gardens published a post by her "facilities manager" featuring his favorite flowers.  Earlier this week, Loree of danger garden provided a list of her husband's favorite plants from their garden.  With a degree of trepidation, I asked my spouse if he'd identify his favorite plants in our garden.  After a roll of his eyes and my assurance that he could limit his list to ten plants, he laughed and signified general acceptance of the request (after I agreed that we could skip the back slope).  As background, my husband has always been very willing to help me with all the heavy lifting in the garden, including the removal of all the lawn that came with it, laying flagstone paths, and constructing a stairway of concrete blocks down our steep back slope.  He also built an arbor for our grapevine, a dining table for our back patio, a lath house for my shade plants and, most recently, compost bins.

In addition to designing and building the lath house, including internal shelving and external window boxes, he also created custom-fitted shade-cloth screens to cover the ceiling and top two shelving areas to increase the shade quotient during the hot summer months 

That said, he shows little to no interest in what I plant, except to occasionally express concern that one plant or another may impact his view of the harbor.  He's also severely color blind, so much so that I'm regularly required to advise him as to the colors marking electrical wires when he's wiring anything. I periodically invite him into the garden to look at plants I'm particularly pleased with but the best I usually get out of him is "uh huh, that's nice."

He walked through the garden before making any selections.  Then he started pointing to things but he left the camera work to me.  I asked if he could tell me what he liked about the plants he identified and he responded to the effect that I hadn't said that was necessary so "no" and we proceeded with him pointing and me clicking the camera.  Here's his list in order of selection:

Pyrus calleryana, aka ornamental pear : This tree admittedly provides good shade cover in the front garden but it's also extremely messy; however, I'm the one that deals with the leaf litter and falling fruit

Phormium 'Maori Queen': One of my favorite plants as well.  He noted that we had several and his praise encompassed all of them.

Pennisetum advena 'Rubrum': He took note of two of them but there are others.  He looked up at Grevillea 'Peaches & Cream' as we walked by the area on the right but made no note of that plant.

Helichrysum petiolare 'Licorice Splash: I was confounded by this choice, especially as he completely ignored Acacia cognata 'Cousin Itt'

Arthropodium cirratum, aka Renga Lily (not currently in bloom): This selection startled me too.  I love the plant, which handles dry shade conditions well, but he passed by a couple of dozen of these plants elsewhere in the garden without noting them.  The two plants here receive more sun and are a bit sun-bleached by comparison to others in shadier areas.

Zinnia elegans: The first flowers he acknowledged, although he waved at them and said "these chrysanthemums or whatever they are."  In retrospect, I wondered if he noticed these because this area was recently covered with scrappy looking rosemary shrubs.  I added the Zinnias as a temporary filler after pulling the shrubs out.

Yucca 'Bright Star': Another plant we agree on

Polygala fruticosa, aka sweet pea shrub: Although I've got a few of these in the garden, the most I can say about it is that it's a tidy shrub when young

Lantana 'Samantha': Another flowering plant, this one with variegated foliage.  There was no mention of the lovely sunflower in a pot nearby that echoed the yellow flower color.

Pelargonium 'Lady Plymouth': His selection of this one had me thinking that he's drawn to variegated foliage that stands out among the surrounding plants

Gladiolus 'Green Star': A total surprise

The Mandarin and navel orange trees: In this case, he specifically mentioned that he appreciated their excellent fruit.  There are still a few orange spots visible near the top of the Mandarin orange tree on the left but most of those are just shells left by the rats after they ate the remaining fruit in place.

If you've counted, his list included twelve plant species rather than ten as we'd both lost track.  Like Loree, I suspect the list might be very different at another moment in time.  No succulents were identified.  I was moderately surprised there weren't more trees on the list (I'm certain the lemon tree would've been included if we'd gone down the back slope) and almost as surprised that he included any flowers at all.  I'm not sure what I can take away from the exercise about his preferences other than perhaps that he shows some preference for variegated plants.

Online sources are predicting a nice drop in temperatures over the weekend and although they've consistently underestimated our daytime highs I'm nonetheless hopeful they're right this time.  I hope you enjoy a safe and comfortable weekend as well.

All material © 2012-2020 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party