November / December 2002

The sunflowers were particularly ugly this year, but they were quite possibly the most important plants I grew.

There are many ways to evaluate a garden—it was beautiful; it was productive; it impressed the neighbors. But one fundamental idea was articulated some 2000 years ago when the Roman writer Horace said a work of art should be two things—dulce et utile—literally, sweet and useful.

There was a lot that was plenty sweet as I strolled around my garden this fall, noting the year’s successes and failures. Salvias, for instance. The purple-spiked perennials ‘May Night’ and ‘East Friesland’ (must-haves for the June garden) did well, but it was ‘Purple Rain’ that earned its keep by blooming all summer long and then into the fall. Rare is the perennial that does that.

As for the annual salvias.... the blue S. farinacea ‘Victoria’ would surely earn a practically-perfect-in-every-way nod from Mary Poppins, and I once heard a “perennial snob” state in a lecture that ‘Coral Nymph’ was one of the few annuals he included in his ever-so-rarefied garden paradise. I like both plants, but the annual salvia that really grabs me is S. pitcherei, whose cerulean flowers are unequaled by anything this side of the clearest, richest, most radiant blue sky you ever saw. (And it made a perfect partner for my chartreuse ‘Bengal Tiger’ canna.)

Other successes? Two rosy pink phlox (‘Shortwood’ and ‘Eva Cullum’) plus the new variegated ‘Norah Leigh’ lived up to their marketing hype and produced clusters of flowers on mildew-free stalks. Ditto for the ‘Flower Carpet Coral’ roses, which I trialed in containers.

As I wandered, that dulce et utile idea kept flitting around my brain, rather like the bees, butterflies and dragonflies that were hovering nearby. I had long valued Joe-pye weed for attracting monarch butterflies and culver’s root for enticing bumblebees, but what about those jack-in-the-beanstalk sunflowers? These no-two-alike, top-heavy, slumping monsters were offspring of plants grown years ago that had been promiscuously interbreeding ever since. I would have gladly sent them packing except for one thing—they attract goldfinches.

The sunflowers aren’t very dulce but they are super-utile. Nothing else I grow seems to bring in the finches with their distinctive high-pitched twittering and flashes of brilliant yellow. And nothing ever seems to make me as happy—indeed joyful—as the realization that I’ve just done something beneficial for some living creature that’s trying to cope with city life like the rest of us.

So I will continue to grow the beautiful and, frankly, useless plants (clematis, peonies, the new ‘Rouge Royale’ rose that gets blackspot but has the most intense perfume I’ve ever inhaled). These plants are for me.

But what I find most satisfying is to grow a plant that has some benefit for the wider world. Those sunflowers will stay. I love every gangly, drooping stalk.