What is an easy plant?

Most of us have plants in the garden that we consider easy to grow. easy to the point of being invasive or that need so little care that we don’t give them much thought. It is always a risky thing to tell anyone that a plant is easy because so much depends on the soil, location, microclimate and so much more. What is easy for you may be really difficult for me to grow.

In my last garden, in the UK East Midlands, Linaria purpurea was almost a weed. It grew with gusto and seeded around to the extent that I would weed it out where it was not needed and left lots to grow. It was useful and did much the same job as the much-vaunted Verbena bonariensis, but easier and, dare I say it, nicer, especially as I had collected pink and white forms and they intermingled well. And the foliage is attractive too. But in this garden it has died out and never seeded except for one plant in a path that I watch nervously in case it too turns up its toes. The hideously vigorous Euphorbia cyparissias, which invokes fear or revulsion in the hearts of most ‘good’ gardeners died here. Maybe it was just as well but I confess I like it.

Sometimes I think it is not the soil or climate but fate or just doing something wrong that is the reason for failure. I like rhodohypoxis but I think I have fussed over them too much in the past. This time I was a bit more casual in my care and they did well and have been blooming as abundantly as I could desire.

And, of course, it might be sheer perversity, wanting to grow something that just doesn’t like you.

I like a fight but I also appreciate an easy life which is why I have planted so many persicarias in the garden. Most are cvs of P. amplexicaulis and although they don’t make me weak with excitement they are robust, grow well here, flower for ages and they amuse the honeybees. So I will continue to collect them. I also have P. alpina, a brute of a plant with white fluffy flowers that is a common garden ingredient in Ireland. And I have found the right place for P. wallichii at last. I know this is often regarded as invasive but the autumnal blooms are showy and fragrant. I first had it in a bed that was too kind to it and it grew alarmingly the first season and I panicked so I moved it to a shaded, dry spot where it barely survived. And after two years I put it in a bed where it can flourish and it is now making a neat clump of foliage and no designs on other areas, so far. No flowers either yet but it is early.

I know that this garden is totally unsuitable for a lot of plants, especially because it can be so wet in winter, but annuals should not be a huge challenge. And yet kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate, an annual persicaria that can often be a seeding nuisance, gives me trouble every time I try to grow it.

I suppose it would be very easy to give up and if it had a more sensible common name, like ‘pink tassels’ I probably would! It is a large annual that can exceed 2m in height and is covered in arching tassels in bright pink in late summer. I have posted about it before, many years ago when I first grew it, and I don’t seem to have learned much!

Persicaria orientalis, for that is the botanical name, is a plant from Russia, east and south to as far as Australia. It has a wide distribution and is usually regarded as a hardy annual. Many people who have it find that it selfseeds about with abandon. Lucky b****rds.

It is something of a short day plant, the flowers only being produced from September onwards. As I discovered in the past, seedlings often bloom when they are tiny but then, after planting out, they grow and grow and don’t seem interested in flowering for many months. In the past I have grown the variegated kind, that comes true from seed, but did not flower before the frost in autumn, and the plain species that also flowered late but did make a display before autumn frosts cut short the display.

So this time I got seeds of ‘Cerise Pearls’ which is supposed to be slightly more compact and, more importantly, to bloom earlier in summer.

I was determined to have a big swathe of the plant this year. I had a large packet of seeds and I sowed some in a tray in the greenhouse in mid March. The mice that were such a tour de force in spring promptly ate the seeds before they grew. So I sowed some on wet kitchen paper in a plastic tub and left them in the fridge for a month to give them a chilling to mimic outside conditions. Soon in heat in the propagator some germinated, erratically over a month or so. It was getting a bit late but I as in late April and growing conditions were improving. I managed to get about a dozen seedlings. So they were transplanted into cell trays and were starting to grow when a slug or snail, tired of devouring zinnias and munching marigolds, added persicaria to its diet and I was left with one, solitary plant. That one was treated with kid gloves and I managed to keep it alive, potted it and was terrified to plant it out. After all, snails ate every sunflower and zinnia I grew this year.

But it really has to look after itself now and it is in the garden and is flowering. The plant is not close to half the size it should be but it is in bloom.

Luckily I still have lots of seeds left in the packet so I will keep trying. I will sow some seeds much earlier this winter and keep them in a mouse-proof safe in the cold greenhouse from October onwards, the same time I sow the sweet peas, and see how and when they germinate. I am determined that I will not be beaten by this one. I will even see if I can collect some seeds. Maybe next year.

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