The Gestalt Gardener: Synthetic vegetation do have their place in gardening

I have a suggestion for a type of plant that is most likely to keep in our gardens at this time of year. Warning: you might be upset.

Remember, I have just returned from my second home in Northern England, where I wrote about the Royal Horticultural Society’s brand new garden called Bridgenorth and wandered through countless villages and home gardens full of plants that love their cool climates.

The small, neatly lined lawns, lush flower beds, the clutter of highly contrasting shrubs, hanging baskets, and other containers are notable for several reasons.

First, British gardeners stick with what they know well in England. Their botanical gardens are testing grounds, flower displays convey the message, and garden centers have full-blown show gardens that show how to use them. In short, they focus on figuring out and then doing what makes sense in their climate.

You can’t understand why we are trying so hard to force tempting but difficult plants from Florida, the Midwest, or the UK to perform well in Mississippi.

That doesn’t mean your roses and hydrangeas don’t have leaf spots or their weeds are easier to manage. They are just less likely to “turn their panties into a twist” when faced with cosmetic problems. And when something doesn’t go well, they just replace it and move on, as they have for centuries. When a tree dies, they plant vines on it or move the stump over to create a small naturalistic focal point. And yes, they distract from imperfection by overfitting with gnomes.

Anyway, when I got back to Jackson it only took me half an hour to remember what I missed. The first clue was to get off the plane and get slapped in the face by hot, wet air. As I trudged up my garden path and the withered magnolia on my one-year-old state flag hung listlessly in the heavy evening air, I was tired too.

But almost all of my shrubs, flowers, and even potted plants have done well, because over the years I’ve settled on those that can take months of neglect. My crowded cottage garden is never watered or sprayed and needs very little pruning because my life is too short to be fooled with picky flowers. Those who fail will be composted.

So after half a century of professional ornamental horticulture, I am adopting native, old, tried and tested new plants and including any newbies that MSU’s Gary Bachman reviewed for us. I have a free listing if you email me.

But for the sake of full disclosure – and please don’t be too judgmental, especially if you wear lipstick – some of my flowers are unnatural. Synthetic, fake. Fake. Latin name could be Plastica silkfolia tackysanthemum.

You have to actually touch some of them to know they are bogus. But keep in mind that most of us are already accepting some unnatural garden features, including gnomes, fairies, saints, toadstools, rocks that were hundreds of miles away, flower flags, and even small water gardens that are just artificial ponds.

Artificial plants (from ancient Latin artificium means “handicrafts”) also have their place in very difficult environments; In addition, modern materials are much more realistic, many even with flaws in detail, than the old plastics.

In a mean prank, I recently posted an unsubtitled photo on the Mississippi Gardening Facebook site showing a fabulous English window box filled with lush flowers. It got dozens of likes, oohs and ahhs, until someone noticed that the flowers are made of silk.

But it has certainly shown that even top garden designers indulge in practicality when needed.

Felder Rushing is a writer, columnist from Mississippi and host of “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.