The Ugliest Plant I Own Is My Favorite

People ask me what my favorite plant is, and they expect something impressive. A rare monstera. Some orchid with a name I can barely pronounce. A fiddle leaf fig that behaves itself.

It's a morning glory.

And if you saw my morning glory in January, you'd think I was terrible at my job.

The winter truth

Every winter, that vine looks like it gave up. Brown. Tangled. Brittle. The kind of plant a client texts me a photo of with the message "I think it's dead, be honest with me." If a morning glory showed up at my plant hospital in December, I'd have to fight the urge to fill out the chart: Ailment — everything.

There is no way to make a winter morning glory look good. You can't style it. You can't put it in a nicer pot and fix it. It looks like failure, right out in the open, for months.

And here's the part I love: it isn't failing. It's working.

Underground, where nobody's looking and nobody's clapping, the roots are holding on. Gathering. Getting ready. The plant hasn't quit — it's just doing the kind of work that doesn't photograph well.

Then June shows up

Come summer, that same "dead" vine explodes. It climbs anything it can reach. Fence, trellis, the neighbor's opinion of your yard — it doesn't care. And every single morning, it opens brand-new blooms. Blue and purple trumpets, dozens of them, like it's showing off.

And here's the detail most people don't know: each morning glory bloom lasts one day. That's it. It opens at dawn, gives everything it has, and it's done by evening. Tomorrow the vine makes new ones.

It doesn't save its best flowers for a special occasion. It doesn't hold back because yesterday's bloom already died. It just blooms again. Every morning. Like the whole point is the showing up.

People are morning glories

I've been thinking about this because I see it in people all the time — including the ones whose plants I take care of, and including me.

We all have winters. Seasons where nothing about us looks like progress. Where the outside world sees brown and tangled and probably-dead, and honestly, some days that's how it feels from the inside too. The job that ended. The year that broke you a little. The stretch where you were just... holding on.

And we treat those seasons like proof that something's wrong with us. We compare our January to somebody else's June and decide we're failing.

If my morning glory has taught me anything, it's that. Some seasons the work is underground. The roots are still doing their job. Nobody hands out awards for surviving winter, but every summer bloom you've ever admired was paid for by one.

The other thing it taught me: when your season does come, bloom like a morning glory. Don't ration it. Don't save the good stuff for later. Open all the way, every morning you get, even knowing that no single bloom lasts. Especially knowing that.

What I tell my clients

When somebody hands me a rough-looking plant and asks, "Is it worth saving?" — my honest answer usually starts with a question: Is it dormant, or is it dead? Because they look almost identical from the outside, and they could not be more different underneath.

I check the roots. I check for green under the surface. And most of the time, there's more life in that plant than anyone gave it credit for.

I think about that with people, too. Give them a little care, a little patience, and the right conditions — and don't judge anybody by their winter.

Summer's coming. It always is.

Keep it green.