Easy to Grow!

I feel a twinge of envy every time I see tall grass swaying in the breeze. I confess: I have a hard time growing grass. Never mind that grass covers much of the earth, or that 100 years ago, my lot was probably covered with prairie grass. My ornamental grasses grow a few blades about ankle high, then they die.

Growing a buffalo grass lawn was the hardest gardening project I ever took on. I e-mailed a nursery in late 2000 about planting one. "By summer 2002," they replied, "you’ll be enjoying a lush, low-maintenance lawn." It wasn’t even a lawn by 2002, and wasn’t exactly "lush" until 2004. And even though it looks good now, it still doesn’t look like the photos in the catalog.

I am not alone in finding an "easy to grow" plant hard to grow. One of my next-door neighbors is a great gardener. When he wanted to grow some flowers in a hot, dry spot, I suggested California poppies. For me, there had been only two steps to growing them: scatter seeds, enjoy blooms. But they wouldn’t grow for him. Even though they’ve reseeded abundantly in my yard, I’ve never seen one in his.

There’s another great gardener who has problems growing an "easy" annual. I think of nasturtiums—the aforementioned annual—as the vine that ate California. I’d grow more of them myself if they didn’t clash with the flower colors in my back yard. Lauren Springer, though, says in The Undaunted Garden that her nasturtiums "never amount to anything." Ms. Springer has a master’s degree in horticulture and grows 1,100 species of plants.

This makes my grass problems less frustrating. I have given up on grass (except for the lawn) to grow other plants. Just yesterday I planted seeds of Liminanthus, or poached egg plant. I’d never heard of it, but the package read "Very easy to grow."