Love/Hate Plants, As Summer Ends

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Eriocapitella x hybrida, common name Japanese Anemone
 
Love, hate:  love the flowers, which appear in late summer into early Autumn, hate the plant, which is a THUG.   I carefully pulled it out in the late winter of 2024--and it's all back.


On the other hand, Leucophyllum frutescens, all love.  100% love.  Incredibly tough, lovely foliage and lovely flowers in the most brutal heat you can imagine (Phoenix, AZ), and in my garden this past Hotgust.
 
'Lynn's Legacy' , a survivor!  

 

'Thunder Cloud', with Aloe pseudorubroviolcea on the left:

Also 100% love for elegant, understated Aloe reitzii, the Aloe harbinger of  all the Aloe blooms to come this fall and winter:

Dahlias, sigh sigh,  love, but they've failed miserably here the past 2 years.  My failure?  Theirs?  They are unhappy, and so am I, because they are unhappy.  No hate, really.  

I read in my info-reading wanderings there's a species of Coleus that is somewhat more cold-hardy than others--this one must be a member of that species, or else has a lot of it's DNA, because it survived quite easily last winter and has grown and sprawled happily this summer.  So: love, pretty much, especially with that also completely lovable Hydrangea, the flowers of which open white, pink up, fade to green, then turn burgundy as the nights cool in November.  Love them both.  Not a bad thing.

Pittosporum tenuifolium selections, love and not hate--disappointment, I guess.  It's too hot for them here.  I've gotten most of the big branch of one that snapped off into the green waste.  Sigh.  

Then as I took a break from this post, I saw another trunk of the same Pitto had also snapped.  P. tenuifolium is now P. tenuifallen  Another mess to deal with Gardeners have their fails, and the Pittos are mine--though--they were promoted with enthusiasm and were sold everywhere here fifteen or so years back--many different selections.  How was I to know they belong farther up the Pacific Coast,  with more rain and less heat?

 

Another mix of love, but and hate--I love Cuphea purpurea, but the Hummers far prefer 'Vermillionaire'.  I want to support hummers and other pollinators, but not every plant works for them that works for me.   Just a little guilt, I guess.  

 

Leucadendron, yeah, 100% love...

..except Leucadendron 'Ebony', which I adore, but which hates where I plant it, and dies on me.  Here's this year's victim:

Agapanthus 'Storm Cloud', another love--it's the other Agapanthus in the garden I don't love nearly so much, mostly because they are not 'Storm Cloud'.

Catharanthus--they along with Cosmos, Pelargonium peltatum, save summer for me.  

The white ones just appeared this summer from seeds fallen from last year's Catharanthus.  Who couldn't love that?  


The last of this year's Cosmos.  Hotgust 2026 was not kind to them:

The variegated Farfugium seems very happy.  It looked bedragged last winter.  Happy it's happy this summer.

 Photo intruder, that orchid that I made happy moving it off concrete and under the Acer:

Keeping my mood up with those, and Zephyranthes.  

Must find a tree trimmer this week to come in and remove the the Pitto tenuifallen mess, and to chop back the many screening hedges.  Sometimes I want to give up gardening, and then I see this:

 
And it's all good again.   

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