Your Maine Garden

I hope there is a special cloud in heaven for slow learners, for I am surely one. In fact, I seem almost deliberately slow to catch on to what others have known for years. For example, I spent the first 35 years of my life not giving hostas a second glance. Ditto for zonal geraniums, daylilies and all sorts of other plants whose popularity is undisputed.

Like most johnny-come-latelies, I try to make up in enthusiasm whatever I may lack in quickness. Thus, when it finally dawned on me this summer what all the fuss over white gardens is about, I find that I can hardly wait to plant one of my own. The idea positively captivates me.

Vita Sackville-West, a legendary British gardener of the early part of this century, seems to get most of the credit for originating the idea of an all-white garden. It seems unlikely that through all the centuries of gardening which preceded her, no one else tried the same color scheme. But in any case, her estate, known as Sissinghurst, still bears the white garden she began. Pictures of it appear in all the famous garden magazines from time to time, and I must say they have never adequately captured the unique beauty of white plants to my satisfaction.

The reason is simple. White flowered plants are best viewed just before dark or by moonlight, and unless the photographer has both the talent and the patience of an Ansel Adams, he or she is likely to miss that mysterious moment when the blossoms take flight.

It’s true. There is a magical time in the evening when plants with white or light colored flowers acquire a surreal quality of mothlike motion and grace. It’s not my imagination and it’s really no surprise either. You see, white flowered plants are most apt to be moth-pollenated than not, and moths come out at dusk. In fact, many blossoms mimic the shape of moths or other insects as a method of attracting them. A white New Guinea impatiens viewed at twilight is a splendid example of this phenomenon.

A friend tried to point all this out to me several years ago, but I wasn’t ready to understand it at the time. She said she wanted a white garden because her career kept her away from home during most the daylight hours. So why shouldn’t she have a garden that looked its best at the very time when she was apt to drag home in the evening?

There is another reason I can think of for planting only white flowered plants. It’s called relief. Relief from the burden of trying to coordinate all the different flower colors that nature has come up with. And relief from the various psychological reactions these colors elicit. As with classic movies filmed in black and white, there is a certain aesthetic freedom one can achieve by working with only white flowered plants. In the end, the viewer gains a chance to appreciate plants for the purity of their many and varied forms without the added complication of color.

If I get any more excited about this idea, I might have to circulate a petition urging the abolition of all non-white flowering plants. Of course, I wouldn’t want to practice that sort (or any other sort) of white supremacism. Especially since every evening is followed by a morning, ideally bright and sunny. And that’s the time to stroll through the colored garden, drinking in the essential hues of summer.

Michael Zuck of Bangor is a horticulturist and the NEWS garden columnist. Send inquiries to him at 2106 Essex St., Bangor, Maine 04401.