In praise of common plants

In one of Aesop’s most well known fables, the fox encounters a lion for the first time, is terribly frightened, and hides in the wood. The second time the fox encounters the lion, he stops at a safe distance and watches the king of beasts pass by. The third time the fox encounters the lion, he passes the time of day with him, asking after his family and wishing him well before turning tail and parting with little ceremony.

The moral of the story is “familiarity breeds contempt”. This is interpreted as meaning either: the more you get to know something or someone, the more scornful you become about that thing’s, or person’s, faults; or alternatively, the longer you live with someone or something, the more passé you become.

In the garden, this idiom plays out in a number of ways. It’s certainly true of our approach to native Australian plants, where we’ll often overlook a familiar stunner right under our feet as we gaze wistfully on beauties from far off lands. I think it’s also a defining characteristic of gardening elitism. I’ve come across more than a couple of plant snobs who boast about the exoticism of their collection while readily heaping scorn on common plants grown by common people.

My response to this kind of horticultural hoity-toity is to say: spare me your pompousness. I’ve never bought into this notion that youth rules, newness is all and the sooner familiar stuff is replaced the better. I happen to like old stuff, and sympathise with Thoreau, who said “do not trouble yourself much to get new things. Turn the old; return to them.” I’m also with Thoreau’s mentor Emerson, who said that “the invariable mark of wisdom is the ability to see the miraculous in the common.”

The practical implications of this kind of belief are twofold. Firstly, most gardeners are simply interested in growing plants that are “gardenworthy”, caring little about fashion, or newness for its own sake. If a new release plant has qualities that make it especially worthy of a place in our gardens, fair enough. Bring it on. But from where I sit, I see less and less regard for the fashion advice dished out by Melbourne’s latest hotshot garden designer. All plants are worthy of respect, and lots (but not all) are worthy of a spot in the garden, be they familiar or not.

The other implication is this, and you’re probably sick of hearing me say it: the best gardens are idiosyncratic. They’re not cookie cutter landscapes made by cookie cutter landscape designers. The best gardens clearly bear the mark of their creator/s, reflecting their personality and tastes, their values and passions. They’re made over many years by real life people. They’ve got soul.

So my point in writing this article is to encourage you to set your garden (and yourself) free from the shackles of designer culture and the dodgy advice that comes from on high about what’s in and what’s out. Today’s trendy plant is just as likely to be tomorrow’s compost.  The sad part about this disposable approach to gardening is that otherwise excellent plants get ripped out simply because they’ve become commonplace. You ought to have no qualms in growing whatever suits your fancy, not theirs.

Make the garden your own. If you’re keen to grow agapathus along the driveway, ignore the fashion police who’ll smugly tell you that such a move is oh so daggy. Aggies are a great plant with a long history of cultivation in our gardens and they work brilliantly lining a driveway. Do what you like. Personally, I favour tried and true, old fashioned favourites over the latest and greatest. Commonplace plants cost me a lot less money than the latest releases, and because I’ve got little time to mollycoddle plants, I’m after things that are reliable performers in our finicky climate.

A caveat for the nursery industry: not for one second am I suggesting that all new release plants are bad. Breeders have an important role in developing gardenworthy plants, and indeed, many exceptional plants have been developed. I am saying though, that some new releases aren’t as special as the marketers would have us believe, and lots have little genuine need to be released at all. I’d rather use a familiar plant creatively than fork out for a whiz bang release that’s not that whiz bang just for the sake of keeping up appearances. The world of old plants is vast and full of opportunity. Why not explore it instead?

First published in The Chronicle 23rd January 2010. Photo by Justin Russell.