Learning to love what I love

When I started seriously gardening in my teens, all I grew was roses. I wanted those huge, opulent, complex, fragrant flowers. I would flip through catalogs and books, totally absorbed in the incredible close-up images. When my own plants produced their first blooms, I bent down, cradling them in my hands like a lover, their scent, texture, and color filling all my senses. Pure joy.

Then I started getting educated. I read books on garden design, got the my first horticulture degree, and learned about things like foliage and year-round interest. I learned that focusing totally on lovely flowers was a rookie mistake, that “real” garden designers grow plants with leaves and stems that look great for months and months rather than flash-in-the-pan effect of floral drama queens. I'm grateful for that education -- it lead me to learn to appreciate the simple, reliable joys of plants like cardoons and bronze fennel.

Somewhere, though, in learning what I "ought" to love I lost track of some of the things I actually love. It turns out that, though I like reliable backdrop plants that look great all year, what I really love is the ephemeral. I WANT my garden to flare up in gorgeous color one day that is gone the next. That's why I live in Michigan. I love spring, and summer and fall, the change, the dynamism. I even love winter – the long peace, the planning, the slowly, tortuously building anticipation that leaves me literally shaking, dancing, laughing with joy when those first crocuses and snowdrops show themselves.

 Steady, reliable performers that don't have an off season are all well and good if you are designed a landscape for a business or park that needs to look good all the time. But I want more in my home garden. I want drama. I want anticipation. I'm happy to accept some ungangly forms or awkward bare spots in exchange for those thrilling, long-awaited moments of sheer perfect unimaginable beauty. The peonies, lilies, tulips, roses, gladiolus, chrysanthemums and all the rest.

I've learned to laugh it off when someone pulls out the tired old line about mature gardeners focusing on foliage rather than flowers. I'm going to plant what I love because I love it, let the designers and experts think what they will. I'd rather be deliriously happy than 'right' any day.