Everyone has their own style of gardening, I tell myself. Try to be more tolerant, I tell myself. Admit that you’re in no position to throw even the tiniest pebble, I caution myself. 

But certain things overcome the struggle against judgement. One of them is the “cut everything back” mindset. 

I’m not against pruning when it is needed – and I definitely need to be a better pruner. I also understand the use of the “Chelsea chop” to get more compact growth and sometimes later blooms. However, I like my plants to be tall and, as far as I’m concerned, they’re blooming late enough as it is. This ain’t Chelsea.

These Alpenglow can’t be touched until late May.

I hear from the “cut it backers” every year. Usually, they are admiring my macrophylla hydrangeas during Garden Walk Buffalo and complaining that theirs did nothing that season. Of course that’s usually because they couldn’t stand the look of the bare sticks in the early spring and cut them back to nothing. Or maybe there was some kind of late fall garden clean-up rampage and the hydrangeas got cut back along with everything else, so as to leave a bare field for … whatever. This is the American neatness syndrome. 

One guy admitted that he probably cut off his hydrangea buds but also said that even knowing this, it would be very difficult not to, because he liked everything to be neat.

I do enjoy deadheading because I see good results from it. I have to restrain my David Austin roses because regardless of classification, every single one of them wants to be a climber. But I don’t cut back just to be in control. And I kind of resented it when one woman asked me, “Don’t you ever cut things back?”

And then there was the one who sneered at the flower heads of my aruncus (goat’s beard) which had been left, even though they were no longer white. She had cut hers back.

The thing is, plants rather impress me with their abilities to get “out of control.” Sometimes, staking is necessary, but if you already have a lot of tall stuff, including some sturdy rose bushes, it’s much easier to hide the stakes or even use other plants as stakes. 

I’m impressed because, given the limitations of my garden, I need those aggressive plants to fill in spaces where some species – including many natives – would struggle, thanks to too much shade, too heavy a soil, or whatever. Echinacea, for example, does nothing in my garden. I’ve gone way over Tony Avent’s “hardy until I have killed it myself three times” limit with them. I still try to find spots where they might succeed. 

As my friend Kathy Guest likes to say, I need the plants that like to romp. They were born to romp and far be it from me to get in their way.