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Exotic plants

With so many new plants at our disposal and the ease of getting them from one part of the world to the next, the responsibility for ensuring they are not too happy in their new home falls on each of us.  Kudzu in the South, loosestrife in much of the nation's wetlands and broom and Himalayan blackberries on the West Coast, are jarring examples of the speed with which a weedy plant can invade the landscape.  Along with increased efforts to rid our fragile landscapes of already established thugs, we must be, and increasingly have been, wary of plants newly introduced from foreign lands.  Local agriculture departments, universities, nursery people, and we, as plant collectors, all share the responsibility.  We want the new ant the unusual but a few rules of thumb can be applied when obtaining the unfamiliar: ask whether the plant reseeds itself quickly; is it impervious to our drought and cold cycles; did it come from waste places in its original home; does it have close relatives that are already a problem; and, of course, did it leap the neighbor's fence within the first two weeks of planting?

            These few cautions aside, the following pages offer more ingredients for our individual gardening recipes than we could probably ever use.  Each entry describes both the physical characteristics of each plant and the best situations for them in our gardens.  Though we can't have them all, learning about them sparks our enthusiasm and gives us a broader idea of the possibilities.  In this manner, each of us is contributing to the trends of the future.