Changing Tastes

As I plant the gardens at our new house I’m reminded how tastes change. I take the weeping pear (Pyrus salicifolia) out of its pot and put site it so that it’s framed by the three Irish yews behind it, and remember that about 15 years ago I told my husband that “I don’t like weeping plants.”  And the yellow-foliaged plants that are repeated through my lakeside perennial border are reminders that I once thought all plants with yellow foliage looked sick…now I can’t get enough of them! 

I once planted the garden with my focus on the color of the flowers and their blooming period, aiming for a show of flowers from spring to fall.  Now I still include that range of flowering times, but I place plants according to their foliage color and texture, and the flowers are almost a secondary consideration. 

In the garden and in life we are constantly called on to change - to examine our opinions and occasionally change them. 

It is May - “Gifts from the Garden Month” - and one of the gifts that the garden gives me is to keep me flexible.