I planted bulbs for it last fall after seeing quamash in bloom the previous spring at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
I like these blooms, so these are keepers in my garden.
Elsewhere a new columbine has started to bloom.
This picture doesn't really show how red the flowers are, and how plastic-y they look.
I bought this on a whim at a garden center. I'm pretty sure I bought it because all their perennials in one gallon pots were $9.95 each, or buy three for $27.00. To save that three dollars, I probably searched high and low and found this and got it.
I don't like it. It looks fake. It is too red. I think it is going to clash with other columbine flowers in my garden. Horrors, it might cross with some of them and who knows what those flowers will look like if I let this go to seed and self-sow?
What I really want is a pale yellow columbine. Wouldn't that look great with the quamash? Sure it would!
Now the question is... what should I do with this columbine?
a) Leave it. I might change my mind and like it.
b) Dig up the plant and give it away.
c) Move it someplace else in the garden where I don't see it so often.
d) Compost it. (I could do that if there were oodles of this plant all over the garden, and actually do compost rampant self-sowers... don't we all? But there is just one of these.)
Following any of these actions, I will then renew my oath... "Only buy plants I truly love. Do not buy to fill the cart." Oh, and my other oath when buying perennials "Do not buy 'one of 'anything." Unless of course it is a special specimen type plant. Or it looks like I could divide it before I plant it. Or if I really want it and they only have one. Or if it is realy expensive.
It seems I'm having trouble with that "one of" oath...
Anyway, the answer to the question of what to do with that columbine is...
b) Dig up the plant and give it away.
I must know someone who thinks this is the prettiest columbine they've ever seen.
Comments
If 'Blue Sky' begins to make you feel that way, pack her and bring her to Buffa10. I will gladly give her a home ;~} H.
I have some doubled columbines here, and I have never seen a single seedling spring from them. I suspect that the poor things are so overbred and full of DNA that they may not be able to make seeds. Anyway if it does cross pollinate it may revert to the more normal type. Columbines are such good colonizers that if you aren't seeing babies by now, you probably never will.
I have never fallen for the 3 (or however many) at a discount. I can multiply. If I need two items and I buy them at full price and don't get the discount, according to your example I will have spent $20 only and not $27. I do not see how buying one more plant actually saves me money. But no one could accuse me of being any sort of shopper. I tend to go on my shopping expeditions armed with a list and with a certain amount of money I can spend. And sometimes ONE is all I can afford, period. The joys of being self employed in a dicey economy.
None of my Columbines face up like that, they are all droopy down-facing flowers, and solid colors in either pink or purple. Except for the Aquilegia canadensis, which is yellow and red.
Columbines are relatively early bloomers anyway. See what happens the rest of the year before you chuck it or give it away.
To each his own! Someone will LOVE it!
Good call on finding that plant a new home. Hopefully its new owners will appreciate its unique qualities.
"Oh you like this one?" Here, it's yours....ha.
Good choice for you.
Jen