If you feel you can’t garden, maybe you “Canna!” “Few of any plants so easy to grow for summer display in North America temperate region gardens provide such rich tropical displays,” T. H. Everett writes in his 1981 encyclopedia, The New York Botanical Garden Illustrated Encyclopedia of Horticulture, of hybrid varieties.
If you can grow a Canna, he recommends using it wisely because it has been overused in the past, used “incongruously.” Better “massed in beds and boarders to produce large scale effects…” is one pointer he gives. He also recommends using dwarf kinds in on the ground containers (too big for window boxes). Maybe people thought they “could” too much, and yet the advice is still to plant more.
If you still are on the “can” side of Cannas, you’ll find that God makes them in all kinds of tempting colors. Red, yellow, cream, apricot and “flame” are listed as flower colors. Foliage can be green, bronzy, or purplish in hybrids. It seems like God wants us to feel empowered to grow these plants. And one kind, Canna edulis, has tubers that can make an edible starch, so you “can” eat it too!
Sources:
The New York Botanical Garden Illustrated Encyclopedia of Horticulture, 1981
