Well, perhaps not quite what you were thinking. . . .

I have a lot of potted plants in the garden. They help to define space. They provide spots of color when in bloom. And they can be moved around—within limits: some of them are too heavy to be shifted without serious motivation, others are picky about sun or shade. Pots can also set limits for more aggressive plants that might otherwise overrun the place.

But I also have a lot of plants that occupy their pots more or less by accident, the lethargy of the gardener, and/or the guilt I always seem to feel over failed experiments. (I think my sister Betty is made of stronger stuff. She doesn’t coddle plants that refuse to grow. But, then, she also has less space. My sister Wanda is more permissive than I am, but has far more space to work in. Maybe space interacts with temperament here.)

Some plants are in pots because they had to be dug up to get them out of the way of construction. Some because I wanted plants to share with gardening friends—always one of the pleasures of having a garden. In any case, many of them have remained in their pots long beyond their replant-by date.

When an octopus agave blooms, it produces hundred of pups. Most of them wind up in the green bin to be collected and turned into compost, but a few of them wind up in pots. For a while, they’re quite charming, with a sort of lettuce-like freshness of foliage, but after six or seven years, they look both disappointed and disappointing. They want out. They want space. They want a proper mountain cleft to sink their roots into—or at least a spot in sunny ground.

Or, again, the Iris confusa, an odd palmish-looking iris that produces a cloud of blossoms in late winter,

rather like an orgy of white moths—they adapt well to pots for a year or two. But they rarely bloom there. They want back in the ground in a partially shaded spot.

I’ve done lots of rescue work over the last few years, whether from building projects, or in the process of trying to find out what plants work in what parts of the garden. Eventually, my work area in the back became so crowded with them that I could barely move around in it. And they don’t all like that spot anyway—too shady part of the year, too sunny the rest. What’s more, they require regular watering and are inclined to turn up their toes when I go away for a week.

Time to do something about it. One piece of garden near the house has been neglected over the years. I don’t want to put anything permanent in it, since it is slated to give way eventually to a porch, a space for sitting, having a cup of tea, looking out over the garden. I’ve tried using the spot for vegetables in the summer, but without much success. The soil is very poor and shallow, with the local bedrock close to the surface.

Many of the plants in small pots were succulents, prompting me to think that drought- adapted plants might survive the harsh conditions of that space. I’ve popped a great many of them into it and have kept them on a stingy schedule of water once a week. Some seem quite happy. Some looked so pathetic before I stuck them in, it’s hard to tell. Some look as if they have decided not to survive this latest indignity, but most of them are still making up their minds.

It doesn’t help, of course, that the neighborhood cats have decided that this freshly dug and very dusty soil makes an excellent public facility for them. That prompted me to spread some stone fragments out among the plants. Success is not complete, but the situation is better. Next step is to wait and see what works—and fill in wherever plants have given up.

At least, I have more room around the potting bench again—ah! a place for pots of the Iris confusa that I need to dig up in order to make way for that Buddleya that’s been in the big pot by the steps far too long!