We Choose Garden Plants like our Favorite Foods

People plant the same flowers every year. Why?

It is the familiar and known that we love.

Some of us do the same with eating out.

Food writer David McAninch writes that people frequent restaurants that have been favorites for years.

He writes, “People go back to these places again and again over the span of decades – not for gastronomic discovery but for comfort.

“People seek that peculiar sense of well-being experienced when eating food that is delicious in precisely the same way it was when you were a child.”

The same practice of choosing the familar also happens when we garden.

Every summer gardeners seek out their familiar plant varieties at the big box stores and the local nurserey.

That group of plants may include petunias, marigolds, geranium, coleus, and zinnia.

Each of these may bring back memories of years gone by, and the plants that were always there.

There is a reason they are the top annual sellers.

Over years we have grown to love them. We wouldn’t think of a garden without them.