Taken for Granted: Plants Deserving of at Least Some Recognition Beyond Their Utility

No one likes being “taken for granted.” I’ve seen that expression misspelled as “taken for granite.” Jarring at first, but honestly, not so wrong. The things you’re most likely to take for granted are typically rock steady after all. And being rock steady is a great quality. Right? So maybe, if we look at it from just the right angle, being taken for granted is a good thing. It could even be construed as a badge of honor!

Lately I’ve been thinking about the plants I never think about. The rock steady ones that so reliably do what we want or need them to do that we cannot help but honor them by taking them for granted.

The first example on my list are boxwoods. For reasons that will become apparent soon these are the plants that prompted this post. I know there are people who go deep on these things. Pay any boxwoodophile a visit and they will take you through a plot of land filled with plants and they will name each of the thousand in their collection, earnestly and passionately pointing out the slightest differences that make this one that and that one this. To these people, I confess that I’m not one of you. I glaze over after the first five varieties. After ten, I’m doing a slow burn. After a hundred, I’m plotting your murder.

Although commonly put in places just to be there, boxwoods can truly add beauty when nicely placed in a beautiful garden.

I will admit to a sheepish appreciation of a good boxwood hedge whenever I see one. They put me in a nostalgic mood for an anachronistic style of gardening that was old when my great great great great great grandfather was new. And, believe it or not, this even happens when I haven’t got a damned clue as to which species or cultivar the hedge consists of! Which is every time. Unless someone insists on telling me. 

Here in Cincinnati, box tree moth has arrived and is wiping boxwoods out in droves. Seeing their sad, round, brown dead corpses literally everywhere is revealing just how ubiquitous and essential boxwoods have been to almost any difficult urban and suburban landscape. Adaptable to sun or shade, easily managed to fit size constraints, evergreen, and deer proof, they have been an easy answer for a lot of people for a very long time. Nothing fills this role as readily and they are going to be very difficult to replace. In Cincinnati, we’re not taking boxwoods for granted anymore.

How to use boxwood old, old-school!

Liriope, if you think about it (and no one ever does), is pretty much a miracle plant. It delivers rich green color all four seasons. Its grass-like foliage provides texture. It’s deer-proof. It grows anywhere. It even has flowers! What’s not to like?

Liriope used nicely in a true garden setting.

The potential of a liriope in bloom.

Except that it is overused and virtually never planted with any artistry. It just gets installed. Sea after sea of it laps onto the shores of concrete walkways and against the cliffsides of buildings.  And yet, if it were recently discovered in some faraway place, bootlegged into the country by cloak and dagger, coaxed into propagation, and sold at prices that require medication, we’d all want one! But, alas, it’s everywhere and, sadly, almost always it’s just ho-hum.

A planting bereft of anything exciting! A mop of liriope next to a couple dollops of boxwood surrounded by a dirty river of mulch. The only thing missing are cigarette butts. 

An unimaginative planting of variegated liriope. Just as speced! On 16″ centers.

But just remember, liriope is everywhere for a reason and if used creatively, it could be a fine element in almost any spot in almost any garden. There. I said it. Burn my plant snob membership card. Revoke my license. 

In the worst of my plant snob days, I used that license to mock spirea without mercy. Whenever another plant snob was angling for an idea, it was always fun to suggest spirea. Especially at a gathering. Oh, how we would all laugh, knowingly and haughtily, at the very thought of any one of us planting one of those. But, just like boxwoods, spireas are solid problem solvers for a lot of common situations. And, guess what? Regular people seem to like them!  Hence, why they’re so common. Funny thing with them though, despite many being rather showy, they always just seem to settle in. I’ve never seen a spirea as the leading lady of the landscape. In fact, in my opinion, none of them ever rise to specimen status. Indeed, he showiest among them tend to detract from any real showstoppers that might be around. Nevertheless, for their sheer stubborn utility, it’s futility to dismiss them. As I have done. And, yet, all that said, there’s still just enough elitism in me that I won’t be shopping for any spirea at the garden center soon. Maybe when the dementia hits full stride.

Hmmm. An all too typical planting of spirea.

C- for effort, and some lowest bidder moves up a grade.

But the potential for the artful use of spirea exists. 

And you might as well throw yews and junipers in with spirea. Different plants, same reputation.   

A plant in my garden that I take for granted is Ceratostigma plumbaginoides. I’m probably alone in this because hardly anyone one else grows it. Others could and should because it’s the kind of easy and adaptable, politely spreading groundcover that routinely finds a home in gas station island beds. But unlike many of those plants, plumbago offers two outstanding ornamental features—pretty sky-blue flowers from June to frost and then decent red fall color. I stunned myself recently when I suddenly realized that it had been forever since I had even bothered to look at it in my own garden! Every time I walked it, I was just gazing right over it. I could blame that on my usual stupor, and, actually, I will. But I’ve snapped out of that for the time being and I’ve made a mental note that I’ll soon forget to better appreciate it next year. Truly, I’m telling you, this plant is so good everyone should plant it everywhere. If that ever happens, we can all gaze right over Ceratostigma plumbaginoides together. And bond as we do. 

The beautiful blue flower of plumbago. In perpetual bloom from late May to October.

Used here as a groundcover, it took it upon itself to grow up through a rock wall, creating a beautiful little scene.

And not just a one trick pony (although that one trick is really good), plumbago dresses up nicely for Fall.

It is ironic and interesting when it comes to native plants. From fleeting ephemerals to pollinating perennials to showy shrubs to towering trees, we Americans took our own native plants for granted. They were just wild plants. Or wood. Or fiber. Or weeds. Once in a while, some fringe element person would recognize them as beautiful plants and take their pictures and write poetic prose, but even they never thought to put them in gardens. No one saw them for that purpose. Because, as everyone knew, garden plants were garden plants and wild plants were wild plants and it never occurred to even one single person that the plants that went into gardens, which invariably came from either Europe or Asia, had to have been, at some time, pulled from where they were happily living in the wild by some weirdo with imagination and wedged into a garden. 

But people are people and European gardeners, it turns out, were into exotic plants too, because, well because. And American plants, being exotic to them, were fresh and exciting and to die for! They really and truly wanted them! In time, they even found some particularly garden-worthy forms and started propagating and selling them. At this point, these plants needed names. And so they got them from the German and Dutch people who were growing them. And, as people are wont to do, they named them after the German and Dutch people and the German and Dutch things they knew using German and Dutch words. This accounts for a rose called ‘Schneewittchen,’ a goldenrod named “Feuerwerk,’ and other similar atrocities.

A good enough plant with a millstone for a name. Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Herbstonne.’

Only when it became obvious that those plants were so good they could overcome bad names did Americans start to take notice and began to plant them, always ignorant as to where the plant originated and why it was named like that. Decades later, native plants became the rage they are now and only the most bland and ubiquitous are taken for granted. Mostly.

So, for the plants that are taken for granted, and for the people who are too, take heart. Sometimes, things change.