brash

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I spent several hours this past weekend at Blooms Days, a garden festival held at UT Gardens on Neyland Drive every year. Special thanks to the Garden Girls and Andy for inviting me. If you have never been to these gardens, stop what you are doing and go now!

This past weekend was unseasonably hot. One very bold exotic plant seemed right at home; it reminiscently caught my eye.

The canna lily, originally from the West Indies, i.e. the New World, tropical America, has remarkable foliage. Gardeners have cultivated this bold relative of bananas into a large-flowered, dare we say, brash and sometimes gaudy garden plant. It’s like a New Orleans’ Mardi Gras float, it commands attention, wherever it is.

I remember as a boy, cannas became quite a fad. It seemed everyone in the neighborhood had at least one in their yard.

-Photo taken at UT Gardens

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