DURING THE SUMMER of 2020, in full pandemic lockdown, I began to contemplate the future of the Scrophulariaceae bed. It is 20 feet (6 m) wide, ringed by a nine-inch-high (23 cm) granite curb, and sits at the northern terminus of the north-south spine of New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, Massachusetts. It needed to make a statement.