I confess. I'm one of "those people." You know, the people "real gardeners" shun, refuse to talk to, avoid at get-togethers. I have a problem. I'm Bill and I grow wedelia (room says "Hello Bill"). It started innocently enough. Just a little ground cover under the ligustrum. It was so easy to grow. And those pretty yellow flowers, just the right touch of color. But it spread. Slowly at first, then faster. Soon I was mowing it, spraying it with Round-Up, pulling it out. To no avail. So I gave up. It grows now and I cut it back to keep it "under control" (under control indeed, baloney, my wife says). So if you are listening, take it from me. Don't succumb to the pretty yellow flowers, the lure of cheap and flourishing ground cover. Today I am a broken man. My life, my backyard, taken from me. I cannot win against it. Wedelia, you win, I give up.

I have limited time to respond, but here goes. We all know of plants that are underused, if not rare, for reasons that seem incomprehensible. Why did landscapers turn privet into the hedge of mass consumption when an evergreen boxwood hedge looks so much better? So I am always looking for the good expansion of the range of plants I have to work with, plants I don't know, but will love when I get to know them. Your title rare for a reason makes us laugh because we encounter so many disappointments along the way. Plants that can't succeed in this climate, plants whose variegation leaves them too weak to make it through the winter, plants whose flowers clash (to my mind) with the color of their leaves, etc. Another thing, I note is the tendency of gardening magazines to highlight a different family of plants each month. Sometimes I think that the selected plant is simply one that hasn't been featured before (and not featured before for the reason that it just isn't really that garden worthy). Yet here is some garden writer talking it up. Not always easy to separate out the worth from the unworthy. I don't worry about echinacea or fear the triumph of cultivar over species. We may waste money on plants that don't succeed. I am guessing that species plants are always ready to take back their own, particularly echinacea! I guess what we worry about is whether bad cultivars may block the success of better cultivars. For instance, we buy and plant heirloom plants which are carefully selected improvements over the species in part because we want to preserve these strains which seem to have had enduring value. (I am just sort of thinking aloud here, trying to figure out what I think). I now have to go back to work.

That is a good story Moni. I enjoyed it. Leslie

I most definitely do NOT have the Sues. I tried taking a picture of them and it shattered the lens on my poor camera! She's not welcome here. Honestly, I don't recall for certain where she went but i think it was Valarie. Or Jen...