Voted off the island

On my island, some plants are voted out and cast adrift. — mrlins/Creative Commons

You don’t have to be a fan of reality shows to understand the concept of being voted off the island.

I think it’s a heartless thing to do to human beings, although the naked greed of nearly naked reality show contestants somehow dampens my natural empathy. On the other hand, the concise “you’re-outta-here’ phrase has become a handy code around my place for plants that just aren’t demonstrating redeeming social value — plants that aren’t contributing anything to the tribe.

That impatiens that has failed to grow an inch while its siblings are covering themselves in salmon-flowered glory? Those “fragrant” night phlox that have no discernible aroma? That bee balm, ‘Petite Wonder,’ that was neither petite nor wonderful? Voted off the island, you bet.

Sometimes it is with deep disappointment and no small sense of wasted effort that I come to the point of finger-pointing condemnation. Take the foxglove ‘Primrose Carousel’ — please.

I’ve grown several perennial foxgloves, favoring them for their lack of edibility to the many critters that look at my garden beds and think “Lunch!” These plants are members of the genus digitalis, whence comes the powerful heart medication. I sometimes wish the greedy groundhogs would sample them and go into frightening if not fatal cardiac arrest, but no such luck.

My first encounter was with Digitalis mertonensis, universally described in gardening literature as having flowers “the color of crushed strawberries.” Who could resist? But in the flesh, the droopy flowers were a muddy mauve and nowhere near as delicious as I had expected. The plants are long gone, shoved off into the storm-toss'd Sea of Compost.

This foxglove, not what I had in mind. Out! Out! — brewbooks/CC

Next was Digitalis ambigua, similar in style to the above but with pale yellow flowers. Pleasant if not thrilling, it lives in the shade of the spruce with blue woodland phlox at its feet and gives me something to look at after the old-fashioned bleeding hearts finish blooming. I thought `Primrose Carousel' would be an improvement, having flowers all around the stem like those fancy (but biennial) hybrids, rather than blooms presented on a single face of the stalk like the plainer but more reliable perennial species.

I bought three little seedlings last summer, coaxed them along with tender attention in pots on the shady patio, and planted them out last fall. I was so psyched that this spring I started more plants from seed, envisioning a charming foxglove colony in the woods. Then I saw last year's plants bloom for the first time this June.

Picture a 24-inch pipe cleaner haphazardly bent into 90-degree angles with tiny yellow trumpets no bigger than a pea along its length and you'll have some idea of the look. I mean, really. Not only were the three mature plants doomed, but the seedlings were forcibly ushered out of the cold frame and off the island, too.

Another holdover from last year was Malva mauritiana , a shrubby sort of perennial with deep violet flowers on the order of small hollyhocks studding its multiple stems. It didn't do especially well in a pot last summer, so it got second chance in the garden. It grew large and bloomed rather copiously this year, but sprawled horribly on weak stems. The leaves grew larger, too, all but obscuring the blossoms below. When the Japanese beetles demonstrated an insatiable hunger for its leaves, I'd had enough. Out! Out!

Sometimes I do give bad-actors another chance in beds that represent a progression toward total abandonment. They may be sentenced to Siberia — that bed along my west border largely filled with Siberian irises — or to the bed bordering the driveway which my friend Paul has dubbed the "plant re-education center." Noting that I rule over both Siberia and a last-chance facility for getting with the program, he claims I'm a closet communist. `Tain't so — I'm more the dictator-for-life type.

Among my container plants are a few characters now living on a thin atoll. The annual phlox that blooms gamely but on sickly yellow foliage responding to no known remedy, the saliva that can't work up the steam to produce more than one blue floret at a time, the straggly petunias that haven't been earning their keep — well, you know where they're headed. Since I grow container plants in plastic liners that fit into my heavy glazed pots, it's easy to pop one out and another one in. Those that didn’t make the cut, ditched.

It may sound harsh, but who said life is fair? On this island, only my vote counts.