Playing favorites

Someone asked me recently, “What is your favorite flower?”

I couldn’t reply right away, and the longer I thought about that seemingly simple question, the more complicated it became. Is it the hardy geranium? Well, maybe, but which one would I choose? Over the years I’ve collected about a dozen geraniums in pink, white and blue of various sizes and habits, and they are all close to my heart, especially when they’re in bloom. Some get ratty after flowering, but that can be forgiven since they come back neat and tidy after shearing and stay that way for the rest of the summer. Some of the varieties bloom almost continuously all summer.

How about foxglove? They are so easy to grow if you don’t mind their self-seeding habit, and they don’t need staking like delphinium. They look stunning growing almost anywhere, but especially alongside white Siberian iris. The flowers only last a couple of weeks, but sometimes they will send up smaller, less showy spikes after the main show is over. The rest of the season you’ll be left with a soft mound of gray-green leaves.

Roses are beautiful, blowsy flowers, and the ones that haven’t lost their heavy scent in the breeding process can send me to another world, but they’re mostly too fussy for me to consider as my favorite flower, if I can choose only one. In fact, the hybrid tea rose would be easy to put on my least favorite flower list in this climate. Without going through immense trouble to spray for insects and disease, then ever so carefully protecting them from the winter cold, I consider myself lucky to get hybrid teas through one or two years. Even then, they look like they’d rather be somewhere else. Rugosa and David Austin roses, on the other hand, are almost carefree, have interesting foliage and variable flower shapes, and, perhaps most important for a rose, they have not lost their scent.

The mock orange is blooming right now, filling the yard with its heavy perfume, but when it’s done blooming, it fades into the background until next summer. It would probably be unwise for me to choose a plant that has such a short period of interest. What would hold my attention the rest of the year?

Annual impatiens give a lot of bang for the buck, as they say, and come in lots of candy colors. They’re essential tools for brightening shady spots, but I’m sure being useful is not the same as being a favorite.

In all the summer excitement, I’ve almost forgotten to consider the snowdrop, that wonderful, ephemeral harbinger of spring. They begin to bloom even before the snow is melted. How exciting it is to find the first tiny snowdrop in bloom after a long, cold winter! Daffodils are also a favorite in spring. They are so easy to get along with and are sure to greet you year after year. Tulips, even if they don’t last as long as daffodils, are so cheerful in the spring, as long as you don’t have deer, which will gratefully eat the blossoms like gumdrops.

I think I’ve come to a decision. I might be able to choose a favorite flower for a particular season, or site, or several favorite combinations of plants that work together to make a perfect picture, but I’m afraid I’m far too fickle a plant lover to pick one all-time favorite plant. It really depends on the time of year when I’m asked, or the particular growing conditions that I’m faced with at the time. It seems that favorite flowers are like potato chips—you can’t stop at one!