Plant Collecting

I have a bit of a collecting trouble . As a child I was always collecting affair : matchbox , pins , rocks ( got ta get ’em all ! ) . I would change focus with regularity , and as a consequence , my parent could never keep up . My father would happily play me nursing home fall from some computing machine convention or something , and I would reply , “ I do n’t accumulate those anymore , ” with the combining of disinterest and reject only a tween can present .

As I grew older , the problem manifested itself in leftover ways : needing to have a duet of shorts from every college lacrosse squad , scrub record store for uncommon John Fogerty albums , hive up anything with Elmer Fudd on it . I passed through a phase where I demand to have every book of literary critique from 1935 to 1965 . These days I have cut back to two collecting : ( 1 ) anything involve Jefferson Airplane and ( 2 ) plants .

My married woman thinks I only accumulate plant life tags , since they are to be found anywhere and everywhere in our house . I am certain you understand about the flora . I always want to know about something new , something obscure , or something variegated .

These plants seem cooler somehow , or perhaps they just disguise my insecurity over the coming into court of my garden . Who care if it ’s a messiness — I’ve got the one with the crimson foliage ! Do you have that ? No ? Oh . Too bad . I do . And face , here is something with flowers that fade to gold instead of the more coarse chickenhearted .

Apparently , I am not alone in my lustfulness for different mixed bag . stock breeder and greenhouse the great unwashed are constantly introducing new cultivars , and we are trance by them . So many arrive out that we call for people like Richard Hawke to grow these plants so we can find out which ones are better , which are worse , and which are just like the others . But are we missing something ?

In our rush to find the new and the varied , we often neglect the master . Keith Nevison ( “ Are Nativars OK?”)—and many pollinator aficionado — are bringing our attention back to the straight species of plant that we have miss in favour of shinier , sexier version . Straight mintage are the truest form , the first edition , and are progressively rare . Few citizenry grow them , so including them in the garden can give one cachet , and the pollinator will appreciate it . I do n’t live why I do n’t have more of them , but I consider I have found the next thing I am going to amass . Sorry , Jefferson Airplane .

— Steve Aitken , editor program

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