I don't think the best scapes are made with "Plants I can use easily" in mind. The best scapes are made with "plants that best fit my inspiration." The highest level aquascaper, IMO, doesn't avoid a plant because it's difficult-- if it's the best plant for the job, that's the plant he uses.
If he doesn't use toninas-- it's not because the plant's difficult. It really is because that plant doesn't fit the design.
For me, when I am planning an aquascape, I know one of the greatest moments is when faced with a particularly difficult to accomplish motif, struggling with the thought for days and days, running through just about every plant in the hobby looking for an answer-- that moment when you wake up, or you see something, or just something clicks when you're not even thinking about it, and suddenly you come to the answer. The moment you think of
the plant, the
only one that could do what you want to do, and that answer glows in your mind so beautifully. It's like that pristine moment a mathmatician has after working on a problem for years and then the answer suddenly comes to him.
For my current scape, that's the way I felt. I was riding the shinkansen, pondering for hours-- how could I create those beautiful forests outside the window? I dozed off in the midst of thinking about it, and then that beautiful moment when I awoke, and the answer of using R. Najenshan with moss came to me. It was one of those pristine moments.
IMO, that's how the plant selection for the best aquascapes is made.
This is in regards to money as well. Hypothetically, if I had a layout in mind where I needed 50 eriocaulon cinerum, but I had no way of getting them and no time to grow out that many, I wouldn't do the scape. I'd do a different design, and save the Erio one for another day. I couldn't do a scape half-assed. It would always be bothering me that I knew the plant selection was "inferior to ideal." For me, ideally, an aquascaper wanting to build a great scape knowing
there was no better way that I could have thought of. There is no plant selection that I thought of that would have been better. This is
the best I could do.
He shouldn't be forced to a situation where he thinks things like,
"If only I had the skill to grow that plant the way I wanted."
or
"If only I had the money to afford those plants."
Those types of faults that aren't even connected to his own creative process should not be the cause of his failure. And when I say failure, I don't mean whether he receives praise or not from others. I mean whether he knows or doesn't know, that his is the best scape he could have made with his current abilities.
If it's about difficult v. easy plants, he should pick the best plant and if that's the difficult one, and he fails, that just means he has to get even stronger as an aquascaper-- in this case, strengthen his plant-growing skill.
Right now, I'm growing Nesea sp. Red in my 5gal, and it holds a critically important place in the design. Despite that the plant finder discribes it as "one of the most difficult plant in the entire hobby," and if it dies the whole layout will fail-- fear of that should not stop me from using it. If I know in my heart that it is the best plant for that place, that's the plant I'm going to use despite that something Rotala rotundifolia might do ok in its place. I don't care. I'm going all-out to try to achieve my ideal for this layout, and if I fail to reach that ideal it just means I have to learn from it and get better.
sorry for the rant, I was going to make a short reply but then ended up thinking of all sorts of stuff I wanted to say.
Maybe it should just go into a new article . . .
. Speaking true i find only few planted tank junkies which are very good aquascapers and have big knowledge about "water chemistry and plant biology" 
.
. Plants love trimming...just like hair do.
Linear Mode
