Memorial Gardens: Plants to Remember

It seems as if I use many flowers and plants to remember people I love who are living still or people I love who have passed on. My mother, for instance, loved the garden and my childhood memories are tinted with the yellow of Kerria japonica, a snowball viburnum that shaded the screened in porch, gladiolus blooming next to the brick, tumbles of yellow and red roses. I found myself unconsciously drawn to such plants as I selected flowers for my gardens at my new home here in Virginia. “Rosemary for remembrance” may be just a saying, but all plants bring with them powerful connotations and memories.

Kerria japonica. Thank you Joan!

Today, the Kerria bloomed for the first time, reminding me again of the power of flowers and plants to help us remember. This poor Kerria came as a bundle of sticks caked in mud. I’d wanted one for ages, but the only one I could find was from a nursery online and they wanted $25 for a little potted plant. No thank you. I put the word out among my gardening friends that I wanted one, and wouldn’t you know it but a short time later my friend Joan called to say that a neighbor was ripping out a whole hedge of them, and would I like one? Sure! She showed up with a bag that looked like a bunch of green twigs caked in mud.  We planted them without much hope in a sunny spot in the new garden area on the southern side of the house that we installed this spring, and waited. Leaves appeared, but they still looked like sticks.  Now today; one single yellow flower, like a pompom, stuck to the end of one of the twigs. The Kerria has bloomed at last!

Sunlight through the leaves of the snowball Viburnum, like stained glass

Mums for my dad; Kerria, snowball viburnum, Blaze roses for my mom; holly for Aunt Betty; butterflies for Aunt Lucille, because they are such a wonderful Christian symbol of rebirth and renewal.

What will people grow to remember me by, I wonder?  (Probably something weedy with thorns!)

Butterfly on butterfly bush today in the garden.