There is no greater harbinger of the approaching fall season than the appearance of hardy garden mums. Like their counterpart pumpkins, which will appear in a few weeks, they are everywhere.

I'll confess that I probably lack the proper enthusiasm for this beautiful plant. All too often the word hardy is a misnomer. Few people experience survival rates of more than a quarter or a third of the plants put in the garden. Many now treat them as an annual.

I don't know whether it is industry driven or consumer driven, but I suspect several villains. To get the perfect mum that we expect to see, the grower pours on the fertilizer and water while controlling the growth habit of the plant.

The plants in today's market place may also stress tight branching and flower power at the expense of hardiness.

However, on the mum scene, three things fascinate me. One is a patch of stalwart plants that have thrived for more years that I can count in my mother's yard. This year they look great. At nearly 98 she gets to the garden, but I'm sure their care has not been meticulous. They bloom a bit later than we would expect, given our experience with modern day mums.

Second was a recent communication from a gardener stating that if you can find starter plants for mums in the spring and get them in the ground, they seem to be perfectly hardy. The problem is that you can't find them.

That is an interesting thought, but I doubt that the industry will push that option any time soon. After all, it may be more worried about having something to sell in the fall than what happens to them after you get them. I didn't say that last sentence, I just thought it. The other was a recent article in one of the leading popular horticulture magazines. They were talking about the old time varieties of mums. They, too, are very hardy. Some of the varieties they talked about they were able to find. For others, they could not locate plants.

These varieties will not have the uniformity of the modern mum. In my garden, I have some that are quite short and others that rise well past my knee. Flower power is there and there is an offering of colors. The selection doesn't match the modern day offerings, but that quest is probably what started the hardiness problems.

Six varieties of the old time mums that I have found include Clara Curtis (mid-sized pink daisy), Cambodian Queen (tall, single pink), Sheffield (tall, single peach), Mary Stoker (tall, yellow-gold) White Bomb (short, white), and Pink Bomb (short, pink).

Mums. Annuals or perennials. Love them or hate them. It's your choice.