Saturday, July 7, 2018

Learning to Love Stella?

First of all, I can't believe it has been two years since I posted anything. Second, I can't believe it has been almost two years to the day. Weird. But that's beside the point, which is that this spring I realized I had a mystery daylily growing in the "foster home" bed where some of my plants live until I can find them a more permanent spot. I had some issues with people driving over my plant tags last year, so I wasn't sure if they all ended up back in the right places and I was short a tag. All I could do was wait to see what kind of flowers it produced. Today I noticed a little tiny fading gold flower and Aha!: last year a friend at work gave me a little potted daylily that she didn't want to keep. I had never recorded it in my Master Planting List or my Where Are My Daylilies spreadsheet, and I had forgotten all about it, poor thing.

Except I'm pretty sure it's a Stella d'Oro daylily, and I have strong mixed feelings about them.

On the one hand, they are plants. Any hardcore gardener has a certain kind of love for all plants just for being plants. Even plants I hate, like ragweed, tug at my conscience when I attempt to destroy them. Except maybe the weeds competing with my plants. But even as I'm trying to pull them out by the roots, I sometimes grudgingly admire plants like quackgrass for their resilience and ability to thrive. I am also aware that my hatred is completely subjective and based on the interference of these plants with my selfish desires.

Besides being plants, Stellas are daylilies, which are Nature's gift to crappy gardeners. Okay, they are Nature's gift to all gardeners. Okay, to everyone. They come in a truly astonishing number of colors, patterns, forms, sizes, and bloom times, and most of them will grow just about anywhere. The ever-present orange fulvas apparently cannot be eradicated. For a while I dismissed fulvas as common "ditch lilies," looking at them with disdain and thinking of them as not worthy of being included in a "real" garden. But I've learned to appreciate their vigor and their contribution to making the world a better place. There's a clump I'm looking at through the window right now that is glowing in the sunlight and it's absolutely beautiful. Just because they are common doesn't mean they aren't valuable.

Which I'm thinking is an important thing for me to keep in mind with Stellas seeing as how they've become sickeningly common. They are Professional Plant Breeding's gift to lazy, uncreative landscaping. Because they are daylilies they are easy to grow anywhere and everywhere, and they bloom early and continuously all summer. And so thousands of landscapers have planted millions of these damn things as islands in seas of orange mulch outside nearly every business in America that uses landscaping services.

I hate this. Passionately, deeply hate this with almost every inch of my gardener's soul. This may have to do with the fact that I think most professional landscaping is completely devoid of any aesthetic or environmental value. It is almost always more of an affront to the eye and to Nature than it is an enhancement. It's all show and no soul, and it's not even a good show.

Folks, I'm going to tell you some hard truths.

  • Orange ("red") mulch is an abomination. It is not a natural color for mulch, and I have no idea why anyone decided to dye mulch this color. It doesn't "go with" anything --not the houses and buildings it surrounds nor the plants stranded in it. It isn't even cheaper than other colors (at least not based on homeowner prices for the stuff you get at Lowe's or Home Depot). 
  • Mulch's value is not as a substitute for groundcover plants. You are not supposed to cover vast swaths of ground with it and then plop a few flowers here and there in the middle of it. Especially since...
  • Mulch does not eliminate weeds. It may help reduce them, but they still make it through. If you think weeds look bad in general, notice how much crappier it looks when you've got random weeds growing up through swaths of mulch. You might as well just have planted a nice grass in all that space. 
  • Mulch should not be used because people are too lazy and/or cheap to plant and/or maintain a more appropriate groundcover. This is the only reason I can think of for all that damn mulch. It's easier to blow a bunch of mulch down every spring than it is to plant a nice, low-growing variety of grass that might require an occasional trimming. (Which is, of course, nonsense because there are all kinds of ornamental grasses that require little to no mowing or maintenance. And that's not even considering the various other groundcover options besides grass.)
  • Mulch should not be orange. I've said it before and this won't be the last time either. This may not even be my first diatribe against it. There is no argument you can offer that will make me accept orange mulch as having any value, and I will judge you all the more harshly for defending it. If you use it, just never let me know or you might be dead to me. I hate it that much. 

I'm realizing that it might not be fair to blame the landscapers if they are just responding to the wants of their customers. Perhaps they are ready and willing to do something different, but none of their customers want to make the initial investment to plant a more permanent solution. Of course, a more permanent solution also removes the need for repeat business, so maybe the landscapers are perfectly happy to keep mulching away. I really have no idea. I know nothing about the costs of professional landscaping options. 

What I do know is that Stella d'Oro daylilies are EVERYWHERE. I sort of hate them because of their ubiquity. I sort of hate them because of how they are planted --one plant per square yard of mulch. I sort of hate them because to me they represent the laziness, the complete lack of creativity, and the pretension that masquerades as landscaping. 

But talk about pretension, oh black pot. Do you think people who dabble in easy gardening shouldn't even bother? No. Isn't it better that they at least try? Yes, I think it generally is. Dabbling can evolve into a passion or kindle a desire to learn more and to grow as a gardener.* Is there no beauty or value to be found in something because it is common? I should know better. True, Stella d'Oro flowers are one of my least favorite colors, but so were fulva daylilies at one point. I "hate" magenta flowers, too, and yet I've found exceptions that I like. Perhaps a bit of warm gold is just what I need. One resilient and thriving specimen plant saved from the trash can certainly find a home somewhere in the rainbow that is my yard, especially nestled between such a wide and interesting variety of other (naturally- and limitedly-mulched) plants.



*The individual dabbler, like the individual plant, may deserve encouragement, but the companies perpetrating bad landscaping judgment still ought to be taken to task. It's better to have no trees than one tiny, sad, suffering tree suffering in the middle of a giant parking lot. That's like having a bear in a tiny cage at a gas station because people like the idea of seeing "nature up close." People like the idea of flowers outside their McDonalds, but that's not an excuse to plant a row of Stellas spaced feet away from each other with orange mulch for miles on every side. The thing I have to remember is that I feel sorry for the tree and I feel sorry for the bear, so I ought to feel sorry for the flowers. The best thing I can do is to give a better life than that to this plant that ended up in my hands. 

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