The popular girls usually got that way for perfectly valid reasons, but in every high school there are others who are more lovely or smarter or better musicians. It may be that these underappreciated girls just aren’t good at self-promotion, or maybe they don’t even care about getting invited to the dance. In the garden, the golden marigolds stand proud and hardy, the rosy geraniums can be seen from down the block, the petunias spread in purple waves, and impatiens light up the shade. They earned their popularity, surely, and can be found at every garden center in May. But there are some shy or at least less well-known plants that are so beautiful it is a mystery to me that they aren’t elected prom queens. One of these is verbascum, a perennial that I grow from seed. It blooms the first year--twice, makes a graceful and long-lasting cut flower, and is very hardy in Upstate New York without special treatment. Although the blooms can be pink or yellow, the most subtle version is a pale peach color with a purple center. There are other insufficiently celebrated plants in my garden, for example, Kousa dogwood, cuphea, crocosmia, and amaranth. They deserve their own gallery of photographs to show them at their best, and that’s another project to put on my list.