The Happy Go Lucky

Some plants find their way into your heart just because they look so cheerful and innocent. Who doesn't love daisies? They are the embodiment of simple and wholesome, like milk, child giggles or sunshine. The fact that they are easy going and thrive with a minimum of care doesn't hurt either.

There is a whole bunch of plants like that, the happy go luckies that make your day every time you look at them: the frangrant petunias, with their fluttering corollas that look like butterflies in the wind, the fiery marigoldswho challenge the sun for brightness, the yellow daffodils that always bring a smile to your lips, the tiny violets, so sweet they melt your heart, the yellow roses, which seem custom designed to lift your mood, the noisy and unpretentious zinnias which mesh in a rainbow of colors.

They may not be the first choices for the landscape designer of refined sensibility, their everyday charm borders on garish sometimes, especially when they don variegated flowers, but they never fail to lift your spirits, especially in bright sunshine.

They used to be the staple blooms of the cottage garden, a style which revels in the mish-mash of color and texture and is supposed to look a bit overgrown and excessive.
Tall hollyhocks, seven foot tall, towering behind clumps of colorful dahlias, flanked by Persian buttercups and moss roses, with random spikes of goldenrod and sunflowers mixed in.

Good bye garden design, hello happy chaos! Lucky for me I chose the cottage garden style from the beginning, and now I don't have to explain myself, although every year I try, unsuccessfully, to establish a color scheme.