Honest Plant Reviews

The plant that showed up to the garden party looking like it got electrocuted and every pollinator in the zip code lost its mind.

Editor's note: You planted one. You have twelve. Nobody is surprised except you.

The native one that was here before your garden center existed.

Editor's note: Every pollinator garden should start here. Not with the flashy cultivar. With the one that actually built the neighborhood.

The plant that convinced America it could garden.

Editor's note: It's the Applebee's of your garden. It's fine. You know it's fine. That's the problem.

You planted a raspberry. You now live in a raspberry.

Editor's note: Year one: charming. Year three: you're negotiating a border dispute with a fruit cane.

The impulse buy that taught you about soil pH the hard way.

Editor's note: The tag had a photo of a pie on it. That was the first lie.

The apple that everyone wants to grow and almost nobody should.

Editor's note: The best eating apple. The worst backyard apple. The full tragedy of wanting what you can't easily have.

The tomato that ruined every other tomato for you and then made you work for it.

Editor's note: Yield per square foot: terrible. Taste per bite: the reason you garden.

The annual that peaked in 1997 and is still showing up to every shady porch like nothing happened.

Editor's note: The comfort food of annuals. Familiar, reliable, and you could do so much better.

The most unfairly blamed plant in North America would like a word.

Editor's note: It wasn't the goldenrod. It was never the goldenrod. Tell your neighbor.

Leaves of three, let it be. You didn't listen. Nobody ever listens.

Editor's note: Respect it. Avoid it. Stop pretending you can identify it reliably. You can't. None of us can.

The Monarch butterfly's entire retirement plan, growing in a ditch near you.

Editor's note: If you have space for one wild plant to take hold somewhere on your property, this is the one. The butterflies already know where it is.

The strawberry you grow for the freezer, not the moment.

Editor's note: Grow Honeoye for the freezer. Tuck six Earliglow in the flower border for yourself. Tell no one.

A white cultivar of a globally rare species you can buy at a nursery for eight dollars.

Editor's note: Globally rare in the wild, casually available in commerce. The gap between those two facts is the whole story.

The only plant that attacks you on purpose and reproduces by doing it.

Editor's note: It didn't jump. You were too close. You will always be too close.

Absolutely not.

Editor's note: Six common names, all warnings. Believe every one.

The most popular perennial in the country that almost nobody grows as a perennial.

Editor's note: Buy hybrid tulips the way you buy cut flowers — for the moment, not the relationship. Buy species tulips if you want something that actually lives here.

The genus name is Greek for "fruit of the gods." Most people's only experience is biting an unripe one and losing the ability to feel their tongue.

Editor's note: Learn what ripe means. Not firm. Not almost. Ripe means ugly, soft, and falling. That's when it's perfect. Everything before that is a trap.

A native plant the federal government made illegal because of something its European cousin did.

Editor's note: Europe never banned it. Europe makes Ribena out of it and puts cassis in everything. We sent 11,000 men to pull it out of the ground. Check your state laws before planting, because in some places this native shrub is still technically contraband. That's the whole story.

Fifty-one years of German breeding to solve every problem with currants and gooseberries. Almost nobody in America has heard of it.

Editor's note: Survived a world war. Survived 15,000 backcrosses. Can't survive American indifference. Yet.

The fruit tree that would rather be a thicket than a specimen, and is right about that.

Editor's note: Every landscaper will tell you it's aggressive. Every bird in the county will tell you it's home.

Smells like death, generates its own body heat, melts through snow, and has been pulling itself deeper underground since before you were born. This plant does not need your approval.

Editor's note: Melts snow. Smells like roadkill. Breathes like a mammal. Pulls itself underground. The most metal plant in eastern North America and it's not close.

Sacred to the Aztecs. Two dollars a flat at Home Depot. Both things are true and neither one is winning.

Editor's note: Two hundred credits and no nominations. The character actor of the garden. Put some respect on the cempasúchil.

The worst tree in America and it's not even close.

Editor's note: If you have one, cut it down. Your state might literally hand you a serviceberry for doing it. That's not gardening advice. That's public policy.

The only thing keeping an endangered butterfly alive, and nurseries would rather sell you the pretty one that kills it.

Editor's note: Check the Latin name. If it says polyphyllus, put it back. If it says perennis, buy every one they have.

The plant that wants you to neglect it and will punish you for being nice.

Editor's note: The perfect plant for the spot you've given up on. The worst plant for the spot you've improved. Know which one you have.

Another hybrid coneflower from the naming department that thinks your garden is a candle shop.

Editor's note: If you want a yellow coneflower that actually sticks around, look at straight Echinacea paradoxa. It's native. It's tough. Nobody named it after a nap.

The most romantic tree in the world until it finds your sewer line.

Editor's note: Plant it by the pond on the back forty. Not by the house. Not near the septic. Not in the front yard. By the pond. On the back forty. That you don't have.

Six feet of fuzzy audacity growing out of a gravel parking lot like it has an appointment.

Editor's note: You didn't plant it. It planted itself. You're just deciding whether to pull it or admit you kind of like it there.

A flower that works as a puppet, dies as a skull, and was once believed to ward off witchcraft. Everything about this plant is unhinged.

Editor's note: Teach a kid to squeeze one open. Then show them the seed pods. Gardener for life or goth for life. Both work.

The coneflower you give to the friend who kills everything.

Editor's note: No gimmick. No ice cream name. No Dream™ series. Just a really good plant that shows up every year and does its job.

Wild Berry's sibling. Same toughness, same awards, half the attention. The story of every white coneflower ever.

Editor's note: A cultivar of Echinacea purpurea that blooms white. The plant doesn't care about the contradiction and neither should you.

The plant that finally solved catmint's one problem, which was catmint.

Editor's note: If Walker's Low is the catmint that got famous, 'Cat's Pajamas' is the catmint that actually behaves. Smaller, tidier, earlier, and it won't eat your sidewalk.

Not Russian. Not sage. Not even Perovskia anymore. Three for three on the identity crisis.

Editor's note: Not Russian. Not sage. Not Perovskia. Excellent plant. Terrible name. All three of them.

Honeycrisp's kid. Ten-million-dollar marketing campaign. Its own Instagram. A former NASA astronaut as brand ambassador. For an apple.

Editor's note: Twenty-two years, thousands of crosses, millions of trees, one NASA astronaut, and a children's musical. All to replace the Red Delicious. Honestly? Worth it.

Cornell spent forty years breeding a better pancake.

Editor's note: Plant it now. Your grandkids will make pancakes under it and they won't know your name but they'll know you did something right.

A fruit that tastes like a blueberry and a raspberry got together, survived minus forty-seven degrees, and nobody in America has heard of it.

Editor's note: Higher antioxidants than blueberries. Ripens earlier. Grows where blueberries sulk. Hardy to temperatures that would kill your car battery. And 99.9% of Americans have never tasted one. Fix that.

An edible hedge that looks like cotton candy in April and got dumped by American agriculture in 1940 for not being convenient enough.

Editor's note: Russia kept breeding it. Eastern Europe kept planting it. We went back to buying Rainiers at eight dollars a pound. Choices were made.

The most popular fruit in Europe that Americans aren't allowed to have an opinion about because they've never tasted one.

Editor's note: Europe never banned it. Europe made it into a national beverage. We sent men with saws. Different approaches.

This borders on Personal Nemesis. Named for the experience of eating one. They weren't kidding.

Editor's note: Best antioxidant profile of any fruit in your yard. Worst first date of any fruit in your yard. Cook it with sugar or don't cook it at all.

Won the pollinator trial. Won Perennial Plant of the Year. Will never be on a magazine cover. Doesn't care.

Editor's note: The résumé says superstar. The looks say 'what's that silvery thing in the back.' This plant has been the best at its job for years and still gets walked past at the nursery. Some plants peak early. Mountain mint peaked at the Penn State trial and nobody was watching.

The best catmint you've never grown because you can't pronounce it.

Editor's note: Named by a man who lost a lung and gained a continent's worth of hardy plants. The least you can do is learn to say it.