Report From An Opinionated Gardener – September 8
If you’ve got a shade garden, you need Kirengeshoma palmata. If you’ve got the room….yellow wax bells grows three to four feet tall in my gardens, and about six feet wide. A large plant, true, but one that doesn’t really show what it can do for three or four years. After that, watch out, because you’re likely to fall in love.
So much of gardening, and life in America if we’re being honest, has moved toward easy, fast results. Many perennial sections are filled with large plants that are in bloom so that people get instant gratification. That’s all well and good, but those plants like Kirengeshoma that will never fill a pot when young fall by the wayside.
We’re constantly balancing the desire for immediate satisfaction and patience, which is particularly hard when we can’t see what the future may or may not bring. I can’t say what’s worth waiting for in your life – mine is challenging enough – but I can tell you that many slow-to-grow plants like yellow wax bells are good investments of patience and time.
Even the buds are worth waiting for.
