There's a lot of variation, I'm sure if someone got serious about it they could find other nice selections.
So what do you think, am I being snobby by not growing something because nature overplanted? Don't even get me started on goldenrod :)

It may be great to some, but I personally think it belongs WITH the goldenrod and all the other weeds.

Nothing snobby about it...,just a personal opinion ;)

It always looks sick here...and never pretty. Too hot and dry :(

Initially I didn't want it because it grows too tall for my modest garden beds. In the years since, I've seen it growing in forests and along roadsides north, south & west of where I am which tells me I don't want it in my modest garden beds. I am slightly discriminating about what I plant and it just never filled any of my gardening goals aside from attracting pollinators.

I think it's a case of right plant, right place. I like JPW and planted it in my large rural garden and regretted it. It is a prolific sell-seeder and has tenacious roots, and though I removed my plants after one year, it was several years before I stopped finding seedlings. It is a great plant in wild wet meadows, but at least around here, isn't a great garden plant. Perhaps it might be in different soils or for someone who deadheads with more rigor than I.

Joe Pye is in full bloom in our area and I love seeing it along the road and in the parks. I wish they could come up with a much smaller version for my flower beds - Little Joe is still too tall. I'd plant it in a second. Mums are just now starting to show color here and most of perennials look really tired right now. I'd love the burst of color JPW would give the beds. It would look great with the caryopteris too.

Linda

campanula your vision sounds perfect. I am very much looking forward to my angelica gigans hopefully blooming next summer, it's been mighty sluggish in my dry soil and I'll be lucky to grow it as a triennial!

What's the problem? If you don't like it or think it is overplanted/overused, or you don't feel it will fit in well with your garden, then don't grow it. I feel that way about a lot of plants.

I welcome Pyeweed and goldenrod, also yarrow, Queen Anne's Lace, milkweed, and a host of other wildflowers to my property. They are beneficial to a wide array of pollinators, butterflies, and other creatures. That purple and yellow is magnificent this time of year. JP does well alongside my brook and out into our wetland area.

I have perennial beds and other gardens with "domesticated" plants, but I keep wild areas expressly for plants like Joe pyeweed and goldenrod. Both have their own unique beauty, but I think neither has the edge on the other.

I introduced a single plant of wild species Joe-pye weed to the garden about 12 years ago. It self-seeded with semi-abandon, so that I have multiple plants all over the garden (to the point of semi-nuisance) and surrounding wild areas.

That said, it's a beautiful perennial, and the better-behaved "Gateway" is still blooming spectacularly in the mixed perennial/shrub/subtropical bed.

I can understand why one chooses to not grow a plant that is everywhere in the area. Joe Pye Weed is not so common here and many people have to ask me the name. Since I deadhead most every day I have only had a few seedlings. It has been in my front bed for many years and this fall I will dig out a part as it is expanding beyond its allotted space.

Goldenrod 'Fireworks' has found a home in my back beds because of its unusual shape of bloom.

See my Angelica giga is going to bloom soon.

Plants have a time and place for different people at different times and places.

I planted some Joe Pye in a bed in the front of my house, by the sidewalk, around a butterfly bush. The past winter's cold must have acted like a steroid, because I have never seen Joe Pye so huge, it's almost 7' in my bed. And it reseeded like MAD. I have a love/hate relationship with it. It's HUGE, and totally out of place, BUT, the bees are having a field day on it. That kind of makes it all worth it. Same with the goldenrod; so many bees & wasps at the moment.

eupatorium is one of my fav plants. love the dusty mauve color that goes so well to balance all our boldly colored yellow, and blue, conifers and woodies. i even grow Little Jo at the front edge of one mixed border- just for some height variety, next to a red dissected J maple and a daphne carol mackie. Only 2 beds where i have it- have moist soil. Maybe that's why ours do NOT seed around (boy i wish they would.) I have a pretty white and green variegated eupatorium but it hasn't flowered yet, and it is only 2.5'H.

I will never forget seeing Gateway in a PNW garden where it was 10-12'H!! I had to ask 'what's that?'; it so fooled me!!
(That's often the case w/ plants in the PNW.It's all due to their secret laboratories where they breed their plants with Wilt Chamberlain DNA.)

Mnwsgal, be sure you eat your Wheaties and do a bit of pumping iron before taking on that clump reduction project. Mine was hard work!