Patient by Default

18 years ago

In the world of perennial gardening, and especially with regard to woody plants, Patience is a key requisite for a gardener's peace of mind. As for me, Patience was not in my family's vocabulary.My voabulary. Today, as I walked and observed in our crowded arboretum garden, I came full face with a clethra that has for the last 12 years been very chummy neighbors with a quince and a variegated cornus controversa. For each of those 12 years, I have seen it and said to myself, "We have to take that out. It was good sized when we planted it but it's never going to do anything. I don't know why people seem to like clethras anyway." and then i've done all the other garden chores that were more pressing, and the clethra has quietly persisted. And now, today, finally, I see why so many people like clethras. It is now a large robust bush covered with light pink bottlebrush flowers. that are fragrant. oh my. why it took this long to show me its true beauty, I will never know. I would have been more than happy to have reason to admire it these past 12 years.

I feel fortunate that we have enough plants that I could bypass it all these years, a way, I think, of having patience by default!

best,

Mindy

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Comments (3)

schoolhouse_gw
18 years ago
My clethras, one white and the other rose/pink, are growing and blooming better than ever this year also. Mine were planted four years ago as very small potted shrubs, and a couple years thought for sure they would not make it. So straggly and only one or two blooms. Today they are still small at maybe 3' a piece. Mindy, I can't wait until mine become "large and robust"!
diggerdee zone 6 CT
18 years ago
LOL, Mindy! I had to smile when I read your post, because I'm such a procrastinator that this is the type of thing that would (and does!) happen to me. I keep meaning to get around to things, and when I don't, I sometimes find that it might have been a good thing that I didn't!

I have many perennials in pots waiting to go in the ground, and while I could have sworn I labeled them all last fall, I discovered this spring that they weren't as well labeled as I had thought. All season, I've been looking at this one scraggly, 3-ft tall wanna-be shrub, (more like a stick with a few leaves, really) wondering what it was. Then today I walked out in back and saw the buds, and knew it was my clethra!

Gee I hope mine doesn't take 12 years to impress me! And I just planted three of them in a friend's garden. Hope they are a bit speedier than yours, lol!

:)
Dee
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tiffy_z5_6_can
18 years ago
I'm in the same boat. Bought a sizeable one for cheap ($3.00) a few years back. It has grown but no flowers up until this year. The foliage has been nice though and the deers don't eat it and that's what has kept it there.

My DM saw it the other day and told me that in the 'old days' before Bounce and Febreeze the ladies of the house would take the blooms and place them in their dressers to make their clothes smell good. :O)