Flannel mullein (Verbascum thapsus) was never invited into our garden. Originally from Europe, it naturalized along America’s roadsides and in pastures. More than once my mother pointed out to me that it is a weed. She would love to fling it on the compost pile.

I find it an architectural wonder, an exclamation mark in the garden. I admire its structure—large lance-shaped leaves that circle up its strong backbone. A backbone that doesn’t even lean, as the lilies do, after waving freely in a wind storm. And I can’t resist petting its silvery-green velvety leaves. While it is quick growing, it is well-mannered, rare in a roadside plant. Flannel mullein doesn’t try to take over a garden,

nor does it fight with its neighbors. It often snuggles into a tight spot and makes itself at home. One plant takes up little room underground as its taproots run narrow and deep, sometimes growing out of a crack in the stonewall or between stepping stones. This biennial seeds itself around, one here, another way over there. Rarely have I found twins, although I did gather seed last year and encouraged it to circle a tree, and I am happy to say it obliged.

I admit mullein flowers are not much, tiny yellow buds tucked into a foot or two of a tightly wrapped, soft cone that points skyward like a spire. Although Wyman’s Gardening Encyclopedia states it grows between four and five feet, I had one sun itself next to a group of conifers and it tops them at eight feet. It wants to keep up with the big boys. Another six footer settled by a shady flower garden, wedged in by a path. Its placement draws attention to the garden as much as any street lamp. All I do is gawk. Its size and perfect posture simply takes my breath away.

Water gardening is new for me even though our pond is twenty- five years old. For years the only pots I plopped into the pond were a few water lilies and a lotus. Then I heard Amedeo Teseo, the former curator of the water garden at Wave Hill (the renowned public garden in the Bronx, New York) speak about water plants and I changed what I was doing.

Amedeo covers approximately 80% of the surface of a pond with plants, carefully mixing foliage textures and shapes as he weaves an exotic tapestry. The blooms are incidental, the patterns on the water mesmerizing.

Amedeo first places an anchor plant such as a majestic lotus or a scene stealing black taro then adds other less imposing plants around it. Following his example I placed a black taro in a cement pot on top of cinderblocks until its bottom skimmed the water giving the impression it is floating. I added a pot of a perennial water lily to spread out around it. Although the pond is three feet deep each plant that is added can be placed at its desired height. They sit on stacks of bricks, cinderblocks or overturned pots.

Other plants in the water garden include umbrella plant, parrots feather, pickerel rush, arrow head, floating yellow heart, forget-me-nots, cardinal lobelia and mosaic plant. Each plant has an inch of pea gravel on top of its soil so the soil stays in place when the pot is lowered into the water and to keep fish from nibbling at their roots.

The best part of a water garden is that the plants never need to be watered. Once planted there is little maintenance. Monthly I poke a fertilizer pill into the water lilies and occasionally, I wade in to remove dead leaves and clean up the plants. When I do I set an open black plastic bag along side me to floats on top of the water as I place the brown leaves in it. On a hot day it’s a pleasure.

While I haven’t yet mastered Amedeo’s techniques, I’ve had fun trying and the goldfish are thriving since they now have many places to hide from the grey herons.

On a bench in the shade of a tulip tree beside the water garden is now a popular place to sit in August. Simply looking at the water on a hot day is cooling.

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Nicknames often make me pause. Who wants to have fool’s onion growing in their garden? Turns out, I do.

I’m guessing the name was bestowed when someone mistakenly dug up a flower in the highlands of California a century ago hoping to discover a tasty onion bulb and instead found a corm no bigger than the tip of a little finger.

Thankfully, many a great American beauty has had to overcome an unfortunate name. Fool’s onion, Triteleia laxa, is such a one. Imagine a miniature agapanthus. Triteleia’s beauty is unmistakable, a cluster of blue blooms resembling a galaxy of falling stars, six inches across, atop a two to three foot wiry stem. Individual stars are each an inch across. Not all of the dozen or more starry blossoms open at once. The buds continue to open for three weeks. Cut when the first buds open, a stem lasts in water for a week and sometimes two. ‘Queen Fabiola’ is a gorgeous dark blue, and its cousin T. ixoides ‘Starlight’ is a twinkling yellow that turns its umbel of yellow stars upward, bring sunlight to earth.

Triteleia’s goodness is evident in its desire to please. It flourishes in lean soil among native grasses in dry meadows and in my rich clay soil with abundant water. It reliably returns each year, settling in, and increasing in number and beauty where it’s happy.

Corms can be planted four inches deep in either spring or fall in Zones 6 to 10. In colder climates treat them like dahlias, digging them up and replanting. Believe me it is worth it. The corms easily slip in under the foliage of perennials such as lady’s mantle or hosta. They don’t sprout much foliage themselves. The linear leaves hug the ground and often disappear before the flowers bloom.

Ironically, the fool is the one who doesn’t bother to plant fool’s onion rather than the one who does.