The Ornamental Cabbage Patch
It's been at least a decade since cabbage went from being merely a hearty kitchen staple to a commercial-landscaping mainstay. The ornamental varieties are among the few plants whose looks are actually enhanced by cold weather, which heightens their color. They also require virtually no maintenance. But ornamental cabbage, no matter how decorative, is not universally beloved. A lot of people think that even the frilliest kale doesn't deserve the status of chief design element at every corporate entryway. At least twice since 1989, the Washington Post optimistically placed the Japanese hybrids on its not-hot lists, only to have them return the following November to local flower beds.
Now, professional gardeners are starting to agree the plants have been overdone--even turning up in whiskey-barrel gardens at gas stations. Others suggest that flowering cabbage and kale can be beautiful when planted "properly," but there's no consensus on what that means: Some prefer them as spots of color amid other plants; others agree with Sarah Price of the New York Botanical Garden, who says they're better massed than "dotted on the landscape like little pimples."
Many gardeners, desperate for alternatives, laud the hardy new varieties of pansies and miniature pansy look-alikes called violas, whose sales have begun to surpass those of cabbage and kale. Besides being less aesthetically polarizing than cabbage, they have the advantage of bouncing back after they freeze. Cabbage and kale, on the other hand, can only take so much cold before they rot. Other horticulturists recommend a more permanent solution--evergreens.
This story appears in the December 8, 1997 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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