Annuals

The annual that peaked in 1997 and is still showing up to every shady porch like nothing happened.

There was a time when impatiens were the answer to every shade garden question. Front porch? Impatiens. Under the maple? Impatiens. That weird strip between the driveway and the fence where the sun never reaches? Believe it or not, impatiens. They were the default, the safe pick, the khakis of the flower world.

Then downy mildew showed up around 2012 and wiped them out across entire regions. Whole neighborhoods of mush overnight. And instead of taking the hint, the industry just started selling New Guinea impatiens, which need more sun and water and are basically a different plant wearing the same name tag.

There are better shade annuals now. Begonias have had a genuine glow-up. Coleus is having a moment it honestly deserves. Torenia exists and almost nobody is talking about it. But impatiens keep selling because the name is familiar and the tags are cheap and garden centers know you'll grab a flat without thinking about it.

Editor's note: The comfort food of annuals. Familiar, reliable, and you could do so much better.

Sacred to the Aztecs. Two dollars a flat at Home Depot. Both things are true and neither one is winning.

The marigold is from Mexico. Not Africa. Not France. Mexico. The Aztecs grew it for ceremony, medicine, and dye. It appears on temple carvings. It blankets every altar and cemetery in orange for Día de los Muertos. The Spanish stole it, the French bred it smaller, the English decided the big one must be African, and now we have two common names that are both wrong and a plant that can't get anyone to take it seriously because it costs less than a latte and your grandmother grew it next to the driveway. The actual Nahuatl name is cempasúchil. Try saying that at the garden center and watch what happens.

Meanwhile the marigold is quietly one of the most useful plants you can grow and nobody cares. The roots exude alpha-terthienyl, which suppresses root-knot nematodes. Not garden folklore. Replicated science. Grow a dense stand of French marigolds before your tomatoes and you are chemically fumigating the soil with a flower that also looks nice. The petals are edible. They're fed to chickens to make egg yolks orange. They produce textile dye. A sixteenth-century English herbalist declared them "venomous and full of poison." He was wrong. They bloom until frost, in any soil, in full sun, from a direct sow a child could manage. Deer won't touch them. Nothing kills them except winter.

Editor's note: Two hundred credits and no nominations. The character actor of the garden. Put some respect on the cempasúchil.

A flower that works as a puppet, dies as a skull, and was once believed to ward off witchcraft. Everything about this plant is unhinged.

Squeeze the sides. The mouth opens. Let go. It snaps shut. Every child has done this. Every adult who says they haven't is lying. The whole bloom is a locked door — only bumblebees are heavy enough to push it open. Everything else gets bounced. This is a flower with its own security system, five hundred years before nightclubs.

Then it dies and gets weirder. The dried seed pods are tiny human skulls. Rows of them on a dead stalk, hollow eyes, gaping jaw. Google it. Greeks thought it warded off witchcraft. Romans said it granted beauty. Medieval Europeans dipped the stalks in tallow and lit them as torches. The Japanese call it goldfish flower. Past English names include calf-snout, toad's mouth, and bulldog. We've somehow reduced all of this to 'that colorful thing in the flat next to the petunias.'

Cool-weather annual. Blooms before the heat, quits when summer gets serious. Cut it back to six inches in July and it might rally for fall. Reseeds if you let the skulls do their thing. Every color except true blue. Smells like cinnamon if you get close enough.

Editor's note: Teach a kid to squeeze one open. Then show them the seed pods. Gardener for life or goth for life. Both work.