by Melody Kendall

Be careful what you wish for... the full saying is from Aesop's Fables and fully stated is: “Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!” I have often heard this saying and its cautionary tale is applicable in many areas in my life experience over the years. Most recently, it is relevant to my gardening experience. Do you feel when you visit a friend's garden and/or a botanical garden finding yourself covetous of an area or the entire garden?  Then, when you implement a similar arrangement of plants and/or a complete duplication of the garden in your landscape, you find it doesn't match your expectations or plans?

My tales began five years ago.  I saw a wonderful waterfall-like display of morning glory flowers (Ipomoea purpurea or Convolvulus purpureus) in a friend's garden.  This wonderful fall of brightly colored blooms filled an entire area of the landscape and completely covered a broken-down old fence. My friend waxed eloquently about this plant's ability to self-seed and said that she had not needed to do any maintenance to acquire this amazing display.  I had to have some.  Purchasing some morning glory seeds and distributing them liberally in the chosen area of my landscape I waited anxiously for my own waterfall of morning glories. The first year I was disappointed by the display as it was rather sparse.  Now, five years later, I am fighting back the plants with a machete. Not really, but the morning glory plants pop up all over my landscape. Adding to the excitement, these plants climb on everything with virtually unbreakable vines that trip me at every chance. A good thing to note is that I have found that the tough shelled seeds, once thought to be toxic to birds, are in fact a food for songbirds and the nectar from the late blooming flowers provide food for pollinators, particularly hummingbirds.  To avoid “waterfalls” of these crazy growers all over my landscape I'm reduced to pulling out the seedlings everywhere before they start climbing. The morning glory plant is listed on the UC IPM Weed Gallery list — need I say more?

You might think that with all the time spent fighting the morning glory wars I would not have had time to get myself in plant trouble again.  Not so.  I was looking for a ground cover to fill in around some pavers and liked the look of Potentilla neumanniana ‘Nana.'  The plant filled the areas between the pavers within a year but, unfortunately, didn't stop there.  Recently, I pulled out some specimens in my rose garden forty feet away.  Plus, each year it gets a rust fungus that kills large swaths of them and is really unsightly.  These plants are good for bees, but not me.  I had come to believe the “poten” part of potentilla means it is a very potent ability to grow.  Instead, the genus name from Latin potens meaning “powerful” is in reference to the reputed medicinal properties of the plant. I like my definition better.

My brother lives on Vancouver Island, lucky him, and I visit every year.  I absolutely love the flowers and foliage that grow abundantly in the pacific northwest wonderland.  Their weather is much cooler and wetter than ours, but I still wanted to try some of their plants in my garden.  One of my favorites is the Oriental Poppy (Papaver orientale) and I succumbed to the urge and purchased some seeds. The seeds are very small, and I needed glasses to divide and distribute them evenly. The first year I wasn't impressed with their germination, maybe 1 in 20 grew. Without flowers the plants look very much like weeds.  When my daughter visited, she asked if I was having back problems. When I looked at her with a perplexed expression, she said she figured I must have a good reason for leaving all those weeds in the garden. We are entering the second year and, my goodness, the seeds that languished last year have decided to get off the duff and go gangbusters.  I now have what looks like a flourishing weed crop.  I can only hope that these plants produce the wonderful flowers. The cautionary portion is that I over-seeded the tiny seeds and thickly growing plants are the result of my overzealous broadcasting. Keep that in mind if you decide to grow them.

One final example will end my tale.  We have fences surrounding our city lot and in the interest of privacy and background greenery we planted star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) vines all along the perimeter.  For some reason these Star Jasmine died out in a couple of years, the reason never diagnosed, so we decided on the potato vine (Solanum jasminoides) as a replacement.  As a privacy screen and color the choice was a good one. The maintenance requirements are a nightmare. We have to cut it back aggressively almost every month, and in the spring and summer sometimes weekly.  Perhaps I should have thought more about the plant description comment ‘fast growing' when choosing this vine. 

Overall, I don't think that I would have done anything different in my garden.  Each of the above plants provide more pleasure than pain, but it would have been nice to be more aware of their growth habits going in. So, be careful what you wish for… lest it comes true. Things may not always turn out the way I had planned or envisioned in my garden, but I consistently learn something in the process. My advice, in hindsight, is to research, research research. I need to go out to my garden to pull up some of those pesky morning glory seedlings now.

Napa Master Gardeners are available to answer garden questions by email: mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org. or phone at 707-253-4143.  Volunteers will get back to you after they research answers to your questions.

Visit our website: napamg.ucanr.edu to find answers to all of your horticultural questions.

Photo credits: Mel Kendall

References:

UC IPM-Morning glories http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/WEEDS/morningglories.html

Monroe Outdoors-Terry Johnson-Wildlife biologist http://www.mymcr.net/our_community/monroe-outdoors-morning-glories-can-be-pests-but-always-beautiful/article_4a119fcc-fdcb-11ea-97df-dbc1356b221f.html

Missouri Botanical Garden Potentilla https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?taxonid=252641&isprofile=0&

Oriental Poppy https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderProfileResults.aspx?basic=Papaver%20orientale

UC IPM-rust http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/GARDEN/PLANTS/DISEASES/rusts.html

Monrovia Potato Vine https://www.monrovia.com/potato-vine.html