It may be impolitic to admit this but I haven’t been the biggest fan of spring flower shows in a long time. Back when my garden existed only as an unrequited dream in my head, I would go to the show every year as a special treat. I’d soak up the smells, the colors and endless inspiration from gardeners able to follow their passion. It didn’t even occur to me to be bothered by the oddness of plants forced out of all reasonable sequence. The shows’ magic just worked on me.

Now that my garden(s) are for real, I have to make an effort to even attend the shows. When I’m there I find myself overwhelmed imagining the amount of effort it takes the designers to set up their displays; I cringe at delphinium and foxglove blooming with the tulips and azaleas; and sadly, I lose the magic.

This year I really tried to walk into the RI Flower and Garden show with a better attitude. – And am happy to report that it worked. I thoroughly enjoyed the creativity and loveliness of the garden club competitions and horticultural entries, and rather than cringing at the forced plants in the display gardens, I enjoyed them for their odd timing. Amelachiers and fringe trees in bloom now! – Heaven. I’ve never seen nicotiana forced before. Brilliant. My favorite garden displays are always the ones that seem the most naturalistic and this time there were several winners for me in that category, which gave me renewed hope for the current trends towards native plants and gardening for the wildlife. Hope is a wonderful thing.

And then there were the lectures. When I was first going to shows I never attended the lectures and now I wonder why not? They’re the best part! Yesterday we heard Scott LaFleur from Garden in the Woods speak on native plants for pollinators. Even though that’s right up our alley these days, I took pages of notes. And I’m desperate now for a sassafras in my yard – certainly not because compounds from its roots were used to make Ecstasy (interesting fact.) but because it’s a host for butterflies I’ve never seen before. And then we heard Steve Aiken from Fine Gardening speak on low-care plants – or as he put it, plants he hasn’t killed yet. Gail and I found ourselves nodding in agreement and laughing along with every selection.

All in all it was a worthwhile adventure – although the marketplace was disappointing. We had expected to fill in some blanks in our seed orders but, alas, the seed booths were were hoping for were not there this year.

Do you usually go to spring flower shows? Why or why not?

I’ve saved this end of the list for most of the plants I loved well enough to take them for granted — meaning, in some cases I haven’t yet shot their portrait.

6. I’m sure that no top ten list for a dry summer would be truly complete if it didn’t include lavender. (No list of mine would be complete in any case.) They were all perfectly lush despite the wet spring and because of the dry summer – our now venerable clumps of Lavandula x intermedia ‘Grosso’ especially. This year we also tried Lavandula angustifolia ‘Silver Edge’ (among others) in the herb garden and it has a silver lining sort of variegation that could make any gardener more optimistic. I don’t even remember the flowers. Whatever.

7. Lobularia - sweet alyssum – ‘Snow Princess’ on the other hand was all about the flowers. They are big (for an alyssum), honey-fragrant (as they should be), and absolutely unstoppable. We grew it in the Rose Garden and Gail claims to have cut it back weekly. I never noticed that she did that because the plants were rampant always. I think they would look even better draped over a wall or flowing out of a giant pot. Next year…

8. No list of Gail’s would ever be complete without a salvia and this year we have a Goldilocks tie between Salvia ‘Mystic Spires’ (a child-sized version of ‘Indigo Spires’) and enormous Salvia vanhouttei and Salvia elegans (pineapple sage). S. vanhouttei might be my secret favorite though because its deep wine color is so …  intoxicating.

9. All of the basils did really well too but I was especially impressed with the variegated Ocimum basilicum citriodorum ‘Pesto Perpetuo’ because it made a sturdy column and never bloomed so never bolted. Next year I’d like to try shearing it periodically for shape (and using the clippings for a perpetual pesto…) And as far as the blooming basils go, African blue will always be on our top 10 list and we’ve added a generous reseeder, ‘Blue Spice’ to the life list too. (No decent pictures of that one either, alas. My apologies.)

9.5 I do have decent pictures of Panicum elegans ‘Frosted Explosion’, a brandy new annual grass we spotted in the seed catalogs last year. It was a dry and fragile thing towards the end of the season but tucked it with neighbors it provided a fuzzy frothy sort of contrast from start to finish.

9.75 Acalypha wilkesiana (Copper leaf) was another plant that by virtue of being incredibly interesting to look at, made every one of its neighbors look extra fascinating too.

10. By contrast Kalimeris incisa ‘Blue Star’ was more easily overlooked. It’s on the tiny side – not quite Tom Thumb but nearly knee high to a toad stool. The daisy flowers were the color of today’s cold bluish sky and lasted nearly as long as winter feels – it was in constant bloom from June into September.

I know I’m forgetting something I loved a lot. Like all of the nicotianas… What are you wishing I had mentioned?

I am inclined to celebrate a new year when we sow sweet peas or when the daffodils bloom or when the leaves fall off the trees. But the beginning of January is as good a time as any to make a fresh start, and in any case, this  is when Gail and I really start over in the gardens, firming up our ideas for next year. (I mean this year.) And like most gardeners we always begin the process of planning by remembering the best and worst of the past season.

Hands down, the worst was the weather: much too much rain in March and then not nearly enough through the summer. But since there’s not a lot we can change about that I might as well move straight on to what was “best” despite the weather (keep in mind, we do water the gardens periodically during dry spells in hopes that nothing ever looks wretched.) Here are my favorite plants from this past year, in no particular order:

1. Allium schubertii and A. albopilosum (Star of Persia). Like a sustained display of firecrackers that sparkled in the garden well beyond when they first opened, and were extra super fun spray-painted.

2. Ricinus communis – Castor bean – ‘Pretty Purple’. This was supposed to be a 4′ tall form but for us even cut back it reached a good 8′. And it had the prettiest purplest leaves and a nicely branched structure (perhaps owing to being whacked back now and again.)

3. Pelargonium ‘Lady Plymouth’ (scented geranium). It’s all about the lacy white-edged foliage and vigorous habit. (Had it ever flowered, that would have been totally beside the point.) It was such a great companion plant that we’ll be hard pressed to not use it again in the Rose Garden.

4. Lespedeza thunbergii ‘Edo Shibori’. Visitors and bees adored this plant. I disparaged it for being beige but then discovered I loved it too, which often happens with things I think I hate. After it went to seed it looked lit from within.

5. Echinacea purpurea ‘Virgin’. I still prefer the color of  ‘Green Envy’ (to any other color on any other flower) but nothing beats the unstoppable blooming and sturdy uprightiousness of ‘Virgin’.

6. (to be continued…)

What were some of your favorites from last year?