GARDENING
Lobularia maritima
Sweet alyssum
Low-growing annual with clusters of small flowers
So easily taken for granted, sweet alyssum is the perfect party host--bringing others together, making everyone else look good--whose presence rarely dominates a scene but whose absence is a black hole: a quite literal black hole, in gardening terms.
Alyssum fills in all those blocks of bare soil around other plants. One little alyssum plant, rising no more than 8 inches above ground, can spread itself thickly over 12 square inches or more. Because it doesn’t seem to care what kind of soil or light it’s planted in, it can nestle against large bulbs or perennials, romp over slopes and walls, curl up in the shade of a tree or bask in a sunny meadow.
Alyssum’s dainty flowers complement more colorful or flashier blooms and are the perfect unobtrusive companion to ivy, tulips, pansies, geraniums--almost any plant that doesn’t get too tall. (They are lost in ground-level limbo under delphiniums, for instance, but right at home under a citrus tree.) They often are used in large container arrangements, filling in spaces around other plants.
Sweet alyssum, once established in a garden, will reseed itself year after year, providing reliable service in return for almost no expense or care--just some water now and then, but not much--and removing a plant that pops up where it isn’t wanted, though I can’t imagine where that would be.
Sweet alyssum usually is sold as a bedding plant, sometimes in individual pots, but it grows easily from seed. Gardeners needing instant gratification should install bedding plants and seeds, just to see how easy it is to start from scratch. No taxing effort here; just toss the seeds in a border or plant grouping--along a sidewalk, in a bulb bed, wherever there is earth that should be covered. Water the seeds (don’t let them dry out at this stage) and watch them go.
Alyssum usually is white, such as the old favorite Carpet of Snow and the newer Snowcloth, but several other colors are available: deep purple Royal Carpet and Oriental Night, dark pink Wonderland Rose, Rosie O’Day. There is even a new white variety called Minimum--the flowers of which spread no more than 6 inches--for really tight spaces. Carpet of Snow tends to sprawl and should be sheared back when it starts to look awkward; it will return with another show in late summer or early fall. The colorful alyssums tend to remain in tight, tense little clumps, don’t sprawl and don’t reseed as carelessly.
Catalogues and gardening books insist that alyssum has a strong, heady fragrance. Every spring, when the garden is alive with new white alyssum blooms, I dutifully drop to all fours and poke my nose into the tiny flowers. After rooting and snorting through countless alyssums, I have yet to smell anything stronger than a very faint hint of honey. I’m not really complaining; I wouldn’t be without this plant.
