The Mr and Mrs of Plant Hates

I love sedums. My wife doesn’t. It’s one of those eternal dilemmas you get in horticulture/marriage – you can’t always agree on every single plant you have in your garden. The majority of flora that has found its way in there we both like, but it’s quite interesting to note the plants that divide our opinion rather than ones we agree on.

It’s a great game to play with your partner in grime. Over the years you absorb a staggeringly large amount of information about the plants they like and dislike without really appreciating how much you really know. So if you want, you can play the ‘Mr and Mrs’ TV game, where you anticipate the answer they give to any plant choice question.

For instance: “Does she like chrysanthemums…?” Easy. My answer to that would be: “As much as she likes geraniums and marigolds.” And it’s a similar story with sedums.

I clapped eyes on my first sedum while visiting Sissinghurst castle one September. It must have been around 1992 as I had my son in a backpack. Very wisely they didn’t allow pushchairs to clog up Vita’s pathways even back then. He’s 23 now and although he says he’d still quite like to be taken around Sissinghurst in a backpack, I think it might come across as unusual.

Typically what caught my attention that day was a huge clump of Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ which a hundred bees were painstakingly working. The distance between each floret so small that they could hop across from one to another, all the while emitting a gentle, contented hum. It was like the plant was purring.

So sedums became a part of our garden. Under sufferance. In those early days we tended to go for plants that produced white, blue or purple flowers – anything that had flowers of yellow, orange or red was verboten. Autumn Joy is a rich ruby red and so not quite on the acceptable spectrum, so I sneaked it in.

But that’s highlighting the negative aspect, there was so much we agreed on – peonies, alliums, wisteria, fritillaries, lavenders, azaleas, clematis, delphiniums, dicentris, nigella were all welcomed into the garden, along with acers. Although that’s an easy one, everyone likes acers – they are the David Attenborough of the plant world, impossible to dislike.

Similarly we shared an antipathy for roses, dahlias, showy primulas, dwarf conifers, pansies and shunned red hot pokers as though we were Edward II.

Despite its slightly artificial air I am a big fan of lewisia. The wife is not impressed with the tiny, intensely coloured flowers. There is a quality about lewisisa that makes it seem like one of the smaller alpine sedums, so maybe that’s why I like them and she doesn’t. Luckily (for the sake of garden harmony) or sadly - my ability to keep my lewisias alive in something approaching an alpine habitat has been a singular failure. They never lasted long, and were too expensive to replace. My farcical attempts to grow lewisia from seed are noted in the Grumpy Gardeners’ Handbook – but to cut to the chase, they involved a certain amount of correspondence with the seed company.

However I’ve saved the ‘best’ till last. I am grateful to Lychnis coronaria, the rose campion, for volunteering to provide bright magenta flowers in the garden for seemingly months at a time through the summer. I’ve never planted it, it just arrived. My much-loved bin stomper (see earlier post) despises them with a passion. To her, they are like the irritating foisted relation she’s eager to get rid of.

As the principal weeder of the relationship she makes sure that they are kept in their place and we are left with two great big clumps. When she passes them she growls. Should I ever fail to come home they’ll be hoiked out of the ground before you can say “green wheelie bin”. I can guarantee hey won’t be replaced by geraniums.