As I think about the growing season just past, I have a few observations about plants that co-existed happily in my garden. Some of these surprised me, as they happened by chance. For example, some bee balm grew up unexpectedly in my hosta bed and looked quite good, and I used a lot of flowers for bouquets, as they were conveniently near my deck. After the bee balm finished blooming, I pulled them all up quite easily after a rain, and the hosta bed looked as good as new.
I planted a pot of kale and put it among my pots of annuals. The curly kale looked remarkably attractive next to pots of million bells, begonias, and petunias.
I always love white flowers, and a year ago I was in love with the lacy-white Euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost'. This past year, I was entranced with white angelonia, and so I combined it with contents of every pot I owned. It looked stunning and provided many white flower spikes that looked wonderful in a vase with virtually any other flower. I grew it with annual geraniums, million bells, begonias, gomphrena, lantana, salvia, and so on. I had too many pots, of course, and spent hours watering them as a result, but I loved them all because of those tall spikes of white angelonia in them.
Plants, like people, often seem better because of the virtues of others.
