The pieris had stood in that spot for probably half a century. Like most of the foundation planting I found when we moved into our home, it was hugely overgrown. Some I renovated and some I left, but the pieris… I wasn’t sure.

I’ve never been a fan of Pieris floribunda, sometimes known as Japanese andromeda, a popular evergreen here in the Northeast. Yes, there are cultivars with exciting flowers and foliage, but this was the straight species or thereabouts. I didn’t like the particular shade of red its new growth took on in the spring, nor the electric chartreuse it changed to as the season wore on. I didn’t like the messy seed clusters that hung on indefinitely — indefinitely — after flowering. I didn’t much like it at all.

Still, I thought it deserved a shot. Pieris are slow-growing, so I knew this was a venerable plant. I pruned it into tree form, exposing a multi-trunked base with nicely colored bark. I liked that. I picked out all the dead seeds. I stood back and stared. I thought it over. I thought it over some more.

After a year of thinking it over, I didn’t like the plant any more than I had from the start. It was time for the pieris to go. A red ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Summer Wine’) had caught my attention, and I thought it would be the perfect successor.

On a bright fall afternoon, I took the pieris down. As a nature lover, it hurt me. Who was I to dispose of an organism that had thrived in this spot since before I was born? As a designer and a gardener, I knew it had to be done. Rarely do we have the opportunity to choose the plants that come with our homes, and when plants that have been chosen for us puncture an otherwise harmonious design scheme, it’s decision time.

But that’s not the end! Yes, good garden plants can often be moved, but if not, they can always be reused. The stump of the old pieris pictured is going to be the base of my new birdbath. I’m recycling its branches into rustic fencing, and all the rest of it went to the town compost. Taking out the pieris may have been a long-contemplated design decision, but facilitating its rebirth in many forms was a no-brainer, and something I consider a responsibility — as a designer, a gardener, and a human being.