My father, who was an accomplished landscape designer in his spare time, frequently found places for birds of paradise. They don’t work everywhere, but when they do, there’s nothing quite like them. Their bloom is absolutely spectacular, and if you’re patient, you can watch them stretch themselves upward, swell and then slowly open like the last chapter of a very good book. When the plant is young it is quite attractive, its leaves are long and arch in all directions above the lesser plants. But my father would not have tolerated such a plant as this. It has overgrown. It has become a chaotic jungle with damaged, competing leaves. He would literally have dug it up and replaced it. Or given instructions to the gardener who inherited his design to do so. It was supposed to be delicate and surprising in all ways. It was never supposed to age or overrun anything. I used to lie in the grass and keep track of the blooms, those that had opened and those that were about to open. I was always amazed.