I would love to grow richly scented roses all summer without the Japanese beetles devouring them. The scent of roses is right near the top of what floats my boat. I also was posted for work to New Orleans for a time, and totally fell head over heals for crape myrtles - handsome form, stunning multicolored bark, and a long bloom season. I haven't a hope of growing either one. The final wish would be to grow some of the plants from the American southwest where I go on visits to my brother - dry-land penstemons, large native mahonias, western Agastaches . . . . sigh.

I am pretty well balanced and in love what I can grow. I balance vegetables with native and non natives but stay in the appropriate for my environment. I keep trying to find the native that I do not have. Fluor de San Juan is making me hyperventilate over a 4" pot in expectation. So is amsonia longiflora, But I would love to grow the A. hubricta but that is not a good one for here. I love adore that lacey orange. I keep trying to grow a smoke tree. They are native to here but I keep killing it the first summer. Everytime I plant it , we have a bad drought with three months and not a drop and plenty 100's.

I also have that "I want the plants of my grandmother's garden" but I live in the wrong area of the country (not Pennsylvania) so I can wish on on that urge but not act. Peonies, forsythia mountain laurels are to be lusted on from afar..I have a soft spot for skunk cabbage and jack in the pulpits but I have no swamp to put them in. I am in semi arid with a water table 1200' down and lots of limestone and no dirt.

I too wish for the true desert plants but the humidity here kills them . No cool nights. Indian rice grass and bush muhly is a goner. I spent $100 learning that last summer.

Roses, roses, roses. Jonquil narcissus, tulips, English bluebells in a wood. Clarkia and cornflowers, the annuals that I used to grow in my tiny square I was allowed once I had turned six. Philadelphus, syringa, pussy willow, hazel catkins. When I see pussy willow or hazel catkins, I am taken straight back to when I was a child and was sent to the local water meadows to gather pussy willow and hazel catkins for our church decorations on Palm Sunday. That piercing, heart wrenching, green, fresh scent of early spring comes straight back to me.

Tall, elegant delphiniums, hollyhocks, lupins. Helianthemums, peonies and obviously, anything daisy shaped. Daisies, daises,daises.

Oh and did I mention roses? Fat, full- petalled, silky, over the top richly perfumed roses, like bosomy, bar maids. Slim, elegant buds of the single roses, opening to a great, golden, boss of stamens. Roses, hanging above my head on pergolas, arches and trees, dripping their perfume down to me.

Daisy

Daisy, your garden is paradise.

I would call it voluptuous - I can definitely smell the roses.

I wouldn't want my garden to be without grasses. I suppose I especially like the plants that set them off. My latest passion for the last three to four years has been the new and ever so colorful Echinaceas and they do go very well with grasses. After that I like so many different plants, I can't imagine what I'd choose next. Even if I name groups of plants, I'd have a hard time putting them in some order of preference. But my ideal garden would find places for Grasses, Roses, Restios, Dwarf Conifers, colorful Heathers, Fothergillas and Iteas, Echinaceas, Penstemons, Agastaches and vegetables and fruit trees. And so much more.

Yearning and gardening do go hand in hand. Smell is the sense that most deeply connects us to our memories, I have read. And the fragrance of roses just goes down so deep for so many of us. So, it is roses for me as well. I think I am going into a dianthus phase though, but I don't know how long it will last. If roses are the bosomy bar maids, then dianthus are the manic pixie dream girls.

In fairness, while I also feel faint with pleasure, regarding a perfect rose...it is only specific roses WITH STAMENS and single ones at that. I have no desire whatsoever to give an inch of garden room to one of those over-the-top, frilly, over-petalled behemoths. Blossom - those absolutely recognisable 5 petalled flower shapes, are the plant archetype I consider to be the apex of horticultural beauty...a folk memory which has persisted throughout my entire life. While other plants come and go...with variations from malva to salvia, right through the bi-symmetry of iris and violas to the enigmatic flowers of grasses, the plant of my heart is a simple, childish version of 'flower blossom'.

For some unknown reason, stamens, anthers, style and stigma are an essential aspect of planty gorgeousness...I could happily live without a single doubled bloom (and care not one whit for sterility, long-lasting or even fragrance). True, I almost caved in over the lovely prunus avium double white...but kept faith with the single...while the double kerria is just an ugly graceless puffball compared to the delightful (and rare) single. I am certain Jung would have fun with archetypes of the heart...while dismissing the simplistic, prurient Freud...but these desires run deep and often have hidden roots.

I must admit to being a Alice in Wonderland sort of dreamer and I always wanted my flowers to talk back at me..... or show me the way.I don't mind it when flowers look half animal. It must be those primal formative years in a jungle.

@ camp, so how long have you waited to use the "Malva to salvia" phrase. Good'un.

What a fun thread! I'm new to this forum so I feel free to repeat what others have probably said. Campanula, you are a wonderful writer. I thoroughly enjoy reading your posts. Daisy, you too.

And, right now the plants I lust for, well, just transplant me to Daisy's place, or anywhere in England. Or anywhere with good soil.

A few Julys ago I visited my kids in Portland, Oregon, a place my husband says could substitute for England. The roses and the hydrangeas there were spectacular, as were the Fuchias. I can, so far, still grow roses, but it's only a matter of time before Rose Rosette gets them, as it's getting all the roses in this area. I do my best growing hydrangea, but it's a struggle to grow blue ones, as our soil is alkaline, and trying to turn a hydrangea blue results in more of a grey than a blue. In Portland, they have blue, purple, and yes, even pink hydrangeas that are big and juicy and just plain stunning.

And the fuchsias. They are a fleeting, cool season annual here, good for just a few weeks in the short spring we have before the heat gets them. In Portland, I saw fuchsias that looked like bushes.

On the other hand, I also love desert plants. On a road trip to California, I loved visiting the desert gardens and parks. All the various agaves, cacti, and other succulents and sticky plants fascinate me. Some of them I can grow here, but mostly in pots, due to our clay soil.

Sally

I definitely do not have the gift of language that Campanula so often demonstrates, but it certainly gives me pleasure to listen in. And thank you, thank you, for calling attention to the beauty of single flowers. I share your preference for them and rail against the nursery trend to show us more and double flowers and ever more artificial looking plants. Breeders have IMO too often bred away the natural grace of many species plants and instead we have huddled masses of foliage - the flower machine.

Um, thank you...suspect I only have a flair for language when plants...or gardens are the subjects (and hyperbole is second nature).