So what is it about sunflowers? Garden after garden, year after year, decade after decade, we keep making room for them.

It would be easy to say, it’s already been done, that sunflowers are boring or overplayed, and move on to something else. I’ve done that. And then, of course, the following year I plant far too many to make up for it.

Calendula is a happy camper while she’s in bloom. She's the Leslie Knope of flowers, all rainbow and no rain.  And who am I to kill Leslie Knope?  Even if she could make my skin noticeably perkier. 

Nasturtium is the perfect Seed Sowing 101 participant. And yet, even after graduating to trickier perennial sowing, we keep coming back to her. We know she’ll germinate. We know she’ll proliferate. We know she’ll show up and do us proud.

This is one of the few plants where the botanic name is more delightful than the common name (Purpletop Vervain? snooze).  ‘Verbena Bonariensis’ happily bounces off the tongue, as do my praises of her as an easy, reliable, and stunning flower beloved by both humans and pollinators.