I grew up knowing my mother worshipped her father and, while she did not exactly despise her mother, she had little to say about her that was positive. My grandfather was a gardener, my grandmother was not, and this “not gardening” became the mark in my childhood mind of my grandmother’s failure to be a person my mother could love. I grew up connecting my mother’s love to men and gardeners. I could not be a man, much as I tried, but I could become a gardener and so I did. It was a way to get her love.
Every summer, I vow I will no longer put up with my Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) ‘Blue Bird.’ Every summer I swear I will not spend another minute of precious gardening time clipping its dead blooms or pulling up the seedlings that proliferate where the dead blooms I have missed fall. And every summer, as I grab my spade and start to dig it up, I am stayed by the force of memory.
I first encountered the Rose of Sharon in Franklin, Indiana, the small town to which we moved when I was ten. I was assigned to pull up seedlings. When I casually referred to them one day as “weeds,” my mother cautioned, “Dear, this is not a weed, it was my father’s favorite plant!” For my 19th century grandfather, gardening in the early 20th century with far fewer plant choices than I have today, the Rose of Sharon must have been a treasure. Pest free and hardy, it blooms in the summer when few shrubs do, its blossoms delicate shades of white and rose and purple and pink and lavender and blue with intensely colored centers to lure the bees. It is easy to prune so its size can be maintained. And it leafs out late, providing the gardener with a reprise of spring just when the sudden breaking-of-bud season seem to be over and suggesting to those who like to see lessons in plants that late bloomers can be prolific! Indeed, the only disadvantage to the Rose of Sharon lies in its endless self-promotion.
When I first started my garden at Columbine Drive, I planted several Rose of Sharon, in memory of my grandfather and for the sake of my mother, no doubt seeking to win her love by planting her father’s favorite. After a couple of seasons of (now I can say it) weeding out those miserable seedlings, I ripped out all but one, my blue ‘Blue Bird,’ which I moved to a distant corner of the garden where no one sees its progeny but me. But honesty, at least where plants are concerned, compels me to admit that I preserve my ‘Blue Bird’ for the very features that must have won my grandfather’s heart – its late summer bloom of a shade of blue that gather’s one’s soul around it, that makes one forget, as the rather restrained White Flower Farms catalogue puts it, “that blue is perhaps the hardest color to find in nature.” And inside each blossom is a heart of red so deep in shade that it stops my heart. The Wayside Gardens catalog can not contain itself when presenting ‘Blue Bird’ to its readers: “Huge, 3-inch azure-blue flowers are produced all summer on bushy plants with handsome, cool green foliage. Very floriferous, this is among the most intensely colored Rose of Sharons.” Each bloom a minor miracle, my ‘Blue Bird’ makes a mid-August lunch of eye candy.
And so my ‘Blue Bird’ stays, for the sake of memory and for blue blue beauty. Still, ‘Blue Bird’ is a lot of work. I must either clip the seed pods before they drop or spend a morning every other week in late summer pulling out seedlings. And so I wonder, would I plant another if I must make a next garden? How strong is memory and connection? Cannot a mid-August lunch be made of something less demanding? Are there no other blues to be had? I think I know why my grandfather loved this plant; I know my mother loved it because he did; and I love it because they did. For now, this is more than enough meaning to spare its life and to bend my will and my back to the work it requires. But in three years? In my next garden?