It happened not too long ago when I organised a meeting in my office for some of our reception staff. They immediately commented on my pothos making mention that it was “…an old plant.” Then a friend who visited our garden pointed to the hydrangea stating that it was “…a grandmother plant.” A Grandmother plant? Sure, to him it was one of those plants that every grandma still has growing in their gardens, but younger gardeners tend to avoid.
Really! So who died and made these guys the plant fashion police?
I began to contemplate the situation realising, that perhaps, many of my plants should have been relegated to the dark-ages. Maybe I’m just not making the grade as it pertains to the trend aficionados.
Plant fashion tends to meander much like any form of popular trend. In fact, I’d even pause to say that it is almost on a par with clothing. It seems that every new season brings a surfeit of plant offerings making last season’s appear redundant. That delicious bloomer you bought last year has now been superseded by a must-have variegated specimen with a dwarf/weeping habit and a price tag indicative of its absurdity.
It can become a tad tedious, don’t you think? Trying to keep our gardens up-to-date and feeling inadequate if we don’t. Or have you reconciled yourself to ignore the panderings of the fashion set?
I guess the difference between clothing and plants becomes apparent when you decide to change your complete wardrobe each season. It’s not entirely possible to overhaul your garden with such regularity – unless, of course, you only grow annuals. Gardens take time to grow and while we may update particular specimens over time, it would be ludicrous to modernize it holus-bolus.
Regardless, I actually appreciate the stalwarts of our gardens. Box hedges, geraniums, hydrangeas, sanseverias, clivias…they all seem so perfectly at home in any landscape. So, to the Plant Fashion Police I snub my nose and wave the defiant index finger. They can go and enjoy those overrated genetically-modified wanna-be’s.
It’s fine to be “trendy”, but like those old, comfortable jeans, there’s something about a “well worn” plant as well. Geraniums will always be among my favorites — as will petunias, hydrangeas, pansies. You know, all those Grandma plants. 
Once again you’ve hit the nail on the head (and I can picture you waving that defiant finger, too). New plants are interesting and fun to try, and in my position I need to try them so I can write knowledgeably about them for my readers (both the ones I get paid to write for and blog readers). But I love the stalwarts–dare we call them gardening classics, as priceless as a Chopin etude or a Hemingway short story?–and the fashion police be damned.
A few years ago a particular magazine here in Canada, mostly a vanity publication for this garden diva in Toronto, had another writer talking disparagingly about digging up particular hostas, actaeas, (cimicifugas) and some other plants that were older varieties or species, and instead planting the newer (bigger, bolder, darker, golder) cultivars–which of course were PP or PPAF, and about seventeen times as pricey. What respect I had for that magazine went out the window. Plant police (and other fashionistas) be damned. I’ll plant what I want so long as it’s not noxious or invasive (in my area).