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The Little Plot of Horrors

© Carol Wallace

I am dying for Bela Lugosi!

No - not because he has his teeth sunk in my neck. I doubt if I'm his type, anyway if I remember my Dracula correctly. What I'm dying to do is plant him in my little plot. Oh, not the traditional 6 feet under. He only goes as deep as any of the other daylilies in my garden. I think he would look just beautiful next to 'Nosferatu' - another dark and mysterious daylily that is also on my wish list.

They could be the cornerstone of my little plot of horrors - a garden filled with plants that recall all those things that go bump in the night and that kept me awake through most of my childhood - which may explain why I am such a night owl today.

No Halloween garden would be complete without a pumpkin - but in this case it really needs to be the ghost of a pumpkin - or at least that's what the all white Lumina resembles. And maybe a vine of the miniature white pumpkin called Baby Boo if I have room.

I could also add a couple of ghost plants. There are at least three which go by this name: Artemesia lactiflora, Voyria and Sedum weinbergii - presumably because either the flowers or foliage cast a ghostly (but never ghastly) light in the garden.

The plant world is rife with chiller/thriller type plants. Take the tacca (you'll have to scroll down a ways to do it). In white it looks like a cat's face with droopy whiskers - but it also comes in black and looks exactly like a bat in flight. I think it would feel right at home in a garden with Bela.

And then I might add Miss Wilmott's Ghost - an Eryngium giganteum that the famed gardener Ellen Wilmott apparently took such a liking to that she surreptitiously sowed a few seeds wherever she went - until it became like a haunting. Wherever she walked - there it grew.

If I wanted to go the Satanic route, I could include many plants named after the devil. Devil's Backbone and Devil's Ivy are usually houseplants, but if there isn't too much frost, I'm sure they could spend a bit of time in this area on Halloween - they might finally feel really at home.

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