The quick and the dead...

Every year at this time the garden magazines fall all over themselves to talk about “plants that die well.” (After all, the season is winding down…they have to write about something.). The latest entry into this sweepstakes of doom is the Royal Horticultural Society's “The Garden” and an article entitled “Plants that die nicely, Roy Lancaster’s look at the color changing antics of herbaceous and semi-evergreen (Huh? Is that likely being partly-pregnant?) perennials.

Roy extols the virtues of fading hosta foliage, bulbs going down, grasses in the twilight of their season and other seldom considered elements of the fall garden like cattails, ferns and Darmera. He anticipates the gist of this essay when, in his discussion of Bergenia, he writes, “Happily, in this instance, the rich colour (spell-checker caught it—but this is the Queen’s English) of the leaves does not presage their imminent death.”

What Roy and the others don’t mention in their articles is: fall color in perennials, trees and shrubs NEVER presages imminent death. THESE PLANTS ARE NOT DYING!

All this talk about “plants that die well” is certainly odd for a group (gardeners) preternaturally concerned with keeping things alive. We could chalk it up to an artistic turn of phrase. “Plants that die well,” has a certain panache that “plants with pretty fall color,” or “plants that go down well,” seem to lack. Is it just marketing?

Everyone knows that perennials will be back next year to charm us with their vernal delights, and subdue us with the autumnal colors. Those that do go down for the count, generally do so without much fanfare. Rather than a blaze of glory, they just get sickly and collapse.

The rich colors of fall are a far different thing. They are not harbingers of death. They are a promise. The promise of life.

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