Here’s to commonplace plants

In my 11th season of container gardening on a ninth-floor balcony, I’ve settled on what I’m going to plant next year and the year after. They are the shade gardener’s old faithfuls, impatiens and begonias, which are producing an abundance of pink, purple, orange, and white blossoms in six railing planters. 

It took me this long to realize why impatiens is a favorite of shade gardeners because I was scared off by impatiens downy mildew. The disease was rife in 2013, when the impatiens I planted all promptly died. Ten years later I’ve tried again and been amply rewarded. Impatiens is thriving in just 2½ hours of sun a day, and I love its many colors and sprawling habit. 

Begonias, another shade star, have done well for me for a few years now. Like the impatiens, this year’s plants are probably three or four times as large as when planted in late May. Growing taller rather than spreading like impatiens, they place second on my preferred annuals list.

Frugal as always, I got by this year spending only $8 for an eight-flat of impatiens and an eight-flat of begonias. Supplementing them are a half-dozen peperomias that don’t mind being transplanted twice a year, to the outside planters in May and an indoor pot in October, and a couple of sweet potato vines that survived the winter indoors.

On the balcony floor are a huge fern that moves inside in winter and a couple of containers with lettuce, spinach, and four o’clock plants grown from seed. “You do real gardening,” a friend says about my sowing seeds. I find it fun to watch sprouts pop through the soil and shoot up, but I understand why in our limited growing season other gardeners prefer the instant gratification of established plants.

I also understand wanting to try new plants. So many have tempted me when I wandered through garden centers. Over the last decade I tried cranesbill geranium, balsam, oxalis, wishbone, ageratum, ivy, spiderwort, even the common violet in the railing planters. They all died. The only coleus that survived was already large and established. Sweet alyssum seeds, which produced abundant plants year after year on the parkway I used to garden, germinated in the planters, but the sprouts didn’t survive. 

I tried cold-hardy perennials — hosta, daylily, spiderwort, ajuga, lily of the valley, lady’s mantle, and lamium — in the floor pots, which I blanketed in bubble wrap for the winter. Some perennials made it through one winter but not two. Wrapping was a hassle. 

Maybe some year I’ll be tempted again to try something different. For now I’m choosing reliability over trial and error. Who cares that ace gardeners may consider impatiens and begonias ordinary and unexciting because of their ubiquity? At the moment I’m satisfied seeing green leaves and colorful blossoms.