Plants With Attitude

Now don’t get me wrong, but have you ever had the sneaky suspicion that your plants have personalities? I have always talked to my plants, but after a while I realised that, in their own way, they were answering back!

I recently had the great misfortune of having to prune a very boisterous hypericum in 90°c midday sun. And all the while that I was chopping and slashing away, I was swearing at it, ‘Right, you bastard, you’re not going to beat me, I’m going to prune you into submission if it’s the last thing I do.’ And the overgrown shrub just shrugged its shoulders and responded, ‘Sure, go right ahead, I’ll only grow back quicker and twice as big by your next visit.’

The acer on my Catio looks at me with reproach; ‘I warned you not to plant me here, it’s no wonder my leaves are shrivelled, sitting here in this infernal draft.’ To which, the ensete banana palm nonchalantly answered her, ‘I don’t know what you’re on about, I’m loving this shady enclave.’

Maybe the roots of my imaginings, no pun intended, go back to my father’s tale of Oliviera, The Spanish Onion, the story of an onion’s journey back to its homeland, after it’s daring escape from the chopping board on our kitchen table.

Salvia Animo, a beautiful, arching perennial, raises a metaphorical eyebrow at me as I attempt, with varying degrees of success, to reign it in. ‘They labelled me as the little sister of Amistad, but here I am, head and shoulders taller than she ever was in this border, and I got through the wet winter, which is more than she ever did.’ The crocosmias, in the meantime, are keeping their heads down as they attempt to free their flowers from her tyranny!

Libertia Formosa is sulking. She hasn’t forgiven me for lifting and dividing her this spring, sending up one measly flower spike out of sheer spite. ‘That’ll teach you to bring me down to size; I’m not going to waste my energy flowering, if this is how you treat me.’

But it isn’t all a war of attrition. The tall perennials and ornamental grasses in the central prairie bed, wave to me as they sway in the breeze, ‘We’re having a party!  Don’t worry about us, we can support each other. We’re in it for the long haul.’

Suffice it to say, that I maintain a continuous, internal dialogue with my plants while I’m up close and personal with them, and I’m never bored or lonely as a result.

 Love, Caroline

Cover photo: Central Prairie Border