Susan Writes

Have you noticed the lavender and purple groundcover flowers in yards this spring?  My thrift has never been prettier.  It’s so pretty that I posted a picture on Facebook and while friends who commented agree the blossoms are pretty, some do not agree on what’s growing under my mailbox.

            Isn’t that phlox? Creeping phlox? Plox?  Moss phlox?  “Aren’t the plants with purple blooms thrift and those with white blooms candy tuft?” asked someone who grew up in Giles County, Tennessee.

            I learned on a trusted gardening website that Phlox subulate, a low-growing perennial, is known as creeping phlox or moss phlox and is also called thrift and is a member of the phlox family.  And according the owner of a local nursey and garden center, both names are used.  The garden center stocks phlox in many colors: white, lavender, and shades of pink and red, and when customers ask for thrift, they are asking for phlox.  Candy tuft is a different plant. 

            The names phlox and thrift may be regional, and thrift is probably an old-fashioned name. The comments under my Facebook post shows that many of us who call it thrift learned the name from our mothers and grandmothers. 

            Mom grew thrift.  For as long as I can remember at my childhood home, lavender thrift covered the four-foot bank between the yard and driveway and draped over the stacked rock wall by the driveway.  Every spring, blossoms covered the bank and throughout the rest of the year, thrift was a green ground cover.              About thirty years ago, Husband and I transplanted many plants from my parents’ yard.  I expected that a couple of years later, the plants would spread and thrift would cover the ground around our azalea bushes.  Mom warned me that the shaded area I’d chosen to plant wasn’t the best for growing thrift, and she was right.  It didn’t flourish, but it lived and eventually it spread, but never like Mom’s.

            Many years later, after Mom and Dad’s deaths, in the middle of summer when the green plants were wilted, a young man mowed our yard and cut weeds using a weed-eater.  He cut my thrift to the ground.  I cried and told myself it was only plants, and I should have told him not to cut the groundcover near the azalea bushes.  

            I dug up some of the roots and transplanted them to an area in a small flower bed that was in full sunshine, and the next spring, I tended those few green sprigs as if they were in intensive care.  They survived and when Husband and I moved four years ago, I transplanted enough thrift to cover a one-foot square and I added plants that I bought at the local garden center

            So, the blanket of lavender and dark pink thrift under my mailbox isn’t just beautiful, it’s a happy childhood memory that I was determined to capture and enjoy. 

            Call it thrift or phlox – it’s all the same.

Filed under: Everyday Life | Tagged: phlox, thrift |