I am the reluctant and sole owner of this giant agave. Armed with vicious thorns and weighing plenty, it is an incredible ordeal bringing it out of the greenhouse-never mind trying to decide where to summer it. Mark does a great job of wintering all my clients tender plants, but this one makes him grumble.
Mark’s staff person, the other Mark, is smiling here, but please notice the sunglasses, and the heavy duty gloves. This plant is like trying to handle a blue heron that has its leg caught in a rock (that’s another story for another time) or some other similar disaster. At this moment, no one is thinking about how beautiful it is-only how deadly it can be.
Mark shows up with a long sleeve canvas carhart jacket-never mind that it is 78 degrees. Rob is poised as if an unexpected left jab may be coming his way.
Finally these three slide it down the ramp, and off the truck. It sat for a week in the middle of the driveway, marooned. I finally said to my landscape superintendent Steve that it might be good to heave the thing in the dumpster, and be rid of it. Steve, who is predictably unpredictable, was indignant that I could even think of chucking an old plant as beautiful as this one. The “beautiful” part of his jolt of a statement set me thinking in a different direction. If I did indeed think it was beautiful, then where would I put it?
I asked Steve to haul it home for me. I did not dare go to photograph that planting scene; sometimes Steve is better left alone. The tuscan rectangle, whose planting scheme had been bedevilling me for weeks-the perfect place for a giant, homeless, but very beautiful agave. Do these two not look made for each other? The big design issue here is about the seeing. Seeing the beauty in a plant or an idea can inspire lots of good. This massive and unwieldy pain of a plant is now the star of its own show. A lot of plants, clients, schemes, garden arrangements and ornament are loaded on my design bus. All of these things need the right seat on that bus, on any particular trip, to shine. This is an issue which is mine to successfully solve.
Edward de Bono put it much than I ever could. “We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause, but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.”
My crew hates when I come to the job. I get dirt all over the furniture, at best, and at worst I am tinkering with the design when they want to get on with business. But when I am home, I can be the Miss Dirtiness I have always been. 
I cannot abide gloves of any description. Even if I could stand to have them on, I invariably loose them, or pitch them out with the trash. Diana never plants for me without gloves-everyone has their own way of doing, which makes for an interesting gardening world. I like to plant with my hands whenever possible. As you can see, I have no fear of dirt. I have no fear of it in my wine, down my socks,. or in my hair. I have on occasion fallen into bed, dirty. After all, the table can be cleaned, and the sheets washed. 
I like everything I am working with right there in front of me. Buck was horrified the first time he saw me put dirt on the dinner table, but he is mostly over that. Its a good thing people cannot see the organisms on every surface, and in the air. It would make the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds seem boring. Most organisms are friendly, even necessary-that’s the scientist in me. I like giant tropical bugs, worms, and toads. However, I could never bring myself to eat a snail; I can barely look at Buck when he eats them. Go figure.
In spite of his tolerance for my habits with plants and dirt, he is always relieved to get to the cleanup part. Pretty soon, we will be over the dirtiness phase.
I planted them with tall airy and graceful annuals, like a giant bouquet-this in stark contrast to the dark solid volumes of my evergreens. I have had so much pleasure from these pots, and their history. But this year I have made a change. I have 3 new pots, from an English company manufacturing classic Italian designs in a weatherproof terra cotta colored concrete.�
Rochelle Greayer, whose garden blog, Studio G, I read every day, was kind enough to mention my blog, and my post on butterburs a few days ago. Her blog is so wide ranging-I can’t think of any topic relating to gardens, gardening and landscape that she is not interested in, and game for. I like this kind of open minded point of view. Anyway, here’s the latest stage of the butterbur flower fright show, Rochelle; thank heavens the leaves are finally coming on. I am so pleased there will be butterburs in your future.