Pretty in pink, or better off blue?
Although there are millions of facts, figures, drawings and charts for the novice gardener to absorb and regurgitate at the appropriate time, when it comes right down to it, gardening is all about opinions — opinions about color, height, views, ornamentation, watering, sustainability, and a million other factors which can quickly have an incapacitating effect on the abject beginner. To make it even more difficult, opinions tend to follow trends and fads, so the information one absorbs today may not be the information one should regurgitate tomorrow. This has the disturbing effect of making most gardeners second guess any masterful decision they may have finally made in their garden; because you can bet if you like it, chances are there is somebody who won’t.
If you have read many books on the subject of gardening, you will quickly come to discover that everyone has their own views and is more than willing to share them. Gertrude Jekyll, the noted English plantswoman and designer, once termed the color magenta as “malignant” in the garden — yet you can buy a variety of Oenothera kunthiana enthusiastically named “Glowing Magenta”. Does this mean that you should run through your garden frantically yanking out the azaleas before they bloom next spring and offend sensitive eyes – or rather, plant more with abandon on grey days when life seems heavy and you need a little lift? There is no definitive answer because all argument about the color magenta and its effect upon our gardens and our senses is based upon subjective opinion, which by its very nature is biased and fickle.
I have a common garden. The well-loved, but well-known species therein can hardly hold their heads up when anyone with a little knowledge and a razor sharp opinion comes to visit. Yes I know there are rarer varieties of Hydrangea Macrophylla – it’s just that none of them are ever on sale at Home Depot. Yes, I am aware that dividing and replanting a Shasta daisy twenty times and calling it “enhanced color repetition” is technically cheating. Yes, I have been told that Roma tomatoes are blasé and the new star on the block is the Amish Paste. I am not undereducated on the subject. It is merely that I have a limited budget, and I happen to love the varieties I grow, period. This means that if you are a plant collector and general plant snob, my garden will disappoint you. There might be the whisper of a rare Philadelphus, or a hard-to-find Euphorbia that I was given by a friend, but overall, these plants are not of the noblésse oblige. And that is precisely how I like it. Consequently, when October comes, you rarely see me outside padding a Zone 9 fig tree with a burlap overcoat and a kiss for luck. And although I may snap up that fragile Musa velutina at the plant swap, you won’t see me ponying up vast wads of cash for the same doubtful pleasure.
Garden Art, or Garden Awful?
Still, this is my opinion, and it’s not to be confused with his, or hers, or even theirs. So when I tell you what I plant, or what I buy, or what I think about garden gnomes, please realize that I am only one voice amongst many, and as Mark Twain once said, “It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.”
Your job as a gardener is to be confident enough in your own opinion so as to not feel threatened by those of others. This is not to say that opinions cannot change when faced with the well-reasoned and well-researched arguments of fellow gardeners, nor that you should back yourself into a corner and snarl at those who might offer some very helpful tips — but don’t be afraid to be different if that difference is what made you pick up a trowel in the first place.
As for magenta in the garden — I can’t say that I have ever been a fan, but I haven’t the heart to pluck out the species-true Phlox paniculata which has spread so happily in pockets around better bred varieties such as “Franz Schubert” and “David.” I wouldn’t call them my favorite per se, but to term them “malignant” would be cruel indeed.
Besides, I would imagine that, in their opinion and in the opinions of the hundreds of pollinators they attract each day, they are quite simply stunning.
