Generally, the best plant combinations in my garden are unplanned. Not the plants, but the size, texture and color of the picture they make together, which is something I don’t see until they have grown together in a way that one day, has become exciting and attracted my attention.
The harsh climate here has encouraged me to grow vigorous plants. Specimens which the Thompson and Morgan catalogue coyly terms “enthusiastic” or even “reliable”, which is code for rampant and immortal, have at least a chance of surviving here. Autumn blooming clematis must be faithfully deadheaded in Connecticut lest the seed heads explode and cover the entire garden with next year’s vines, but here it dies back completely every year to grow to about 15′ and the seeds find no foothold on the stony ground in the early frost. I can grow honeysuckle, grapes, mullien and woad without fear that one day I won’t be able to leave the house for the biomass blocking the door. Where I grew up, on the Connecticut River, one had to cut the vegetation back from the mailbox with shears or risk the box being overgrown with morning glories and poppies over the course of an afternoon. Or maybe it just seemed that way to me at seven, with a pair of shears.
In this Maine garden, plants seem to incorporate each other nicely, showing each other off to good advantage.
The fragrance is wonderful. I have a still-life set up in the hoop house of three of these in a vase and I can’t keep the hummingbird and bee-moths out of there.
Also known as “Chinese Forget Me Not”, these are all over the garden (see below). Every time my mother comes by in the Spring she looks around and says, “They never spread like this at our house”. True, that. My mother and father gave me a tiny clump of this plant when my garden was brand new, 18 years ago now, and I have acres of it while their place in Vermont has a few well-behaved speciments: one pink, one blue and one white. It’s an interesting commentary on soil type and plant preference. I have to weed these out of the driveway, for heaven’s sake. And the strawberries. And the iris. Oy.
These are the blossoms of my specimen of Gunnera. They are about 2′ high, and 4″ across.