It being January, I am naturally flipping through a stack (it really is a stack) of plant catalogues, with the added dimension of surfing a series of garden websites.  The number of plants I would like to plant is rather large, the bank account not so large, and so a selection process occurs.  In the process of that, I am also considering why I want this plant or that plant.  What is that attracts me to it?

Two things it seems.  The first is a strong desire to re-establish as many native species as I can.  This was an almost reasonable urge when I was eyeing trees save they take a great deal of space and take quite some time to grow, having gotten intrigued by the woodland herbaceous types….well.

The second is a more complicated one: that is the history of the plant in relation to man.  Names are the beginning of this: if a plant has succeeded in getting an intriguing common name it is of more interest to me than if it is still a straight botanical name.  In this I betray myself as a humanities scholar and not a botanist; this means that Trillium recurvatum, aka ‘Wood Lily’ or ‘Bloody Butcher’ is more interesting than Trillium pusillum, aka ‘Dwarf White Trillium’.  Both are equally elegant natives, therefore attractive on that alone, but the former’s common name suggests a longer human awareness of it.   Plants such as Goldenseal, Mayapple, Solomon’s Seal, Shooting Stars, the list is endless, are not simply beautiful natives; they are also living reminders of the rich relationship man has had with the natural world.

This interest in the human/plant relationship is not limited to names and botantical folklore.  Art enters into it: I am eyeing a perfectly lovely double columbine called ‘Ruby Port’.  Why? Because it is precisely the same flower as shown in an illuminated manuscript from the late 1400’s.  I have a thing for the medieval plants; but I also have an interest in the plants of the late Victorian period.  Why? Because they are, dare I say it, ‘period correct’ for the landscape….of course, it also is an excuse to sometimes go after the eye-catching Asian species!

So can one come up with a healthy, primarily native plant landscape with accent plants of medieval European and nineteenth century American garden heritage? Well yes, but knowing that doesn’t help me narrow the list down…grr.