Gardenmob readers have come to expect a certain amount of love passed from me to coneflowers, especially pale coneflower. There is one notable exception in this lovefest - the Big Sky coneflowers. White coneflower is one of my favorites. Not as robust in growth as purple coneflower, but that’s okay - white is always appreciated in any garden. White coneflower, like most coneflowers, is easy once established.

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Coreopsis verticillata Zagreb, along with Coreopsis verticillata Moonbeam, was one of the first Coreopsis to find its way into my garden.  Whereas Moonbeam Coreopsis (and both Zagreb and Moonbeam are also known properly as Threadleaf Coreopsis or Tickseed) has flowers of buttery cool pale yellow, Zagreb Coreopsis is a warmer golden color with larger flowers.  Other than the color of the flowers, both of these Coreopsis are remarkably similar…including a propensity for some frustrating behavior. Read on…

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Hmmm….I wonder where the perennial blackberry lily gets its name. Perhaps blackberry lily blooms at the same time that blackberries set fruit (which does seem to be true in my neck of the woods). Sounds good, but common wisdom is that blackberry lily gets its moniker because the clusters of black seeds resemble blackberries. Anyways, the photograph at right is Blackberry Lily Yunnan Form, collected in 1998 by Paul Jones of Duke Gardens and now available to you at your friendly neighborhood nursery. Blackberry lily, also known as leopard lily, is a member of the iris family and native to East Asia (although found naturalized in North America). Hardy to Zone 4, blackberry lily grows a foot or three, and has narrow sword-like leaves that while definitely sword-like are much too floppy for actual sword-fighting.

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Hydrangea arborescens Annabelle offers an opportunity for those cold climate gardeners that fancy a hydrangea or three. Hydrangea Annabelle has huge moppy white flowers to ten inches or so, and offers much better winter hardiness than Hydrangea macrophylla (the big blue and pink Hydrangeas). Reliablely hardy in Zones 4/5 and pushing it in Zones 2/3 (although one hears stories…), Hydrangea arborescens Annabelle grows beautifully in the South as well and will flower profusely after fierce winters and impertinent pruning. Some nutcases actually grow Annabelle as a pruned hedge, but please don’t ruin the character of this shrub by ’shaping’ it. This plea goes especially for the Forsythia pruning crowd as well (and you know who you are).

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I wandered past prickly pear cactus for years, somewhat mystified as to why anyone in the humid hot magnolia-laden South would grow a cactus native to the Southwest and Mexico. Wrongly, I abscribed certain oafish qualities to those hillbillies that would grow prickly pear cacti among azaleas…that is until one day I was wandering around the industrial area where I have an abode and came upon a large, mature prickly pear cactus in full bloom. We think we know a thing, and if we keep our eyes open long enough to realize we don’t know as much as we think, then we learn. Indeed, prickly pear cactus are the only cactus native to the Eastern United States…Eastern prickly pear cactus, Opuntia humifosa.

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Butterfly Weed, Asclepias tuberosa, is a spectacular and undemanding native plant, and similar to Queen Anne’s Lace, most beautiful along roadsides. Coinciding with the ripening of the blackberries in the mountains, Butterfly Weed is a tremendous plant for those gardeners that value native plants and/or who hope to attract butterflies. Butterfly Weed emerges late in spring, so be patient (and don’t disturb the soil). Butterfly Weed is one of our most drought tolerant plants, thus ideal for xeric gardens. Once established Butterfly Weed can be tough to move, due to the tuberous nature of the root system (ie: Asclepias tuberosa). Hummingbirds will visit Butterfly Weed, presumably while waiting for your Cardinal Flower to come into bloom.

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Technorati Tags: Asclepias, Butterfly Weed, native plants, butterflies, drought tolerant plants, xeric gardens, Hummingbirds

I was driving innocently (okay, not so innocently) down the street a year or so ago and was struck dumb(er than usual) by a purple coneflower that was…orange? Bright pastel orange. Some strange mutant coneflower plant and if there is one there are sure to be more mutants on their way. What to do…rush home and gather friends, family, and children and head for safety? Would the mutants find us? Better yet, before allowing panic to overtake me, I would go seek an expert, a sage, if you will. So I went to Google. Indeed, as I feared there were more mutants but thankfully not big scary monster bear-mutants, only coneflowers, the product of years of effort by Atlantan Richard Saul. Named Big Sky Coneflowers, these coneflowers are the product of hybridizing purple coneflower, Echinacia purpurea, with Echinacia paradoxa.

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Red Hot Poker, Kniphofia uvaria, also known as Torch Lily, is a perennial whose flowers can truly be deemed original. Red Hot Poker bears orange and yellow blooms on spikes that soar into the air to five feet…or in the case of the Red Hot Poker pictured at the end of this post bend simperingly to the ground prior to righting themselves and knodding upwards. Truthfully, Red Hod Poker has foliage that can get a bit tatty, but unlike my feelings towards Spiderwort, Torch Lily’s sheer exuberance wins me over (art, and gardening and plants are indeed art, is subjective to our whims). What would I do? I’d plant it in the very back of the border and let the flowers shoot like missiles to the sky. Red Hot Poker needs full sun regardless to avoid some of the flopping seen in the photo below, and still there is no guarantee the stems won’t yield to the weight. Red Hot Poker is attractive to birds (including Hummingbirds) and bees and resistant to deer.

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The subject of our latest evisceration in the plant world, Pampas Grass, Cortaderia selloana, is, admittedly, like shooting fish in a barrel. I want to emphasize that any cowboys from Argentina (gauchos) that want to grow Pampas Grass to remind them of home are fully exempt from my comments to follow. I do stress that the point here is not to pick on a particular plant but instead to illustrate fundamental gardening truths via an unfortunate example here and there. Pampas Grass was all the rage back twenty years or so ago. Easy to grow and hardy and dramatic in a look-at-me sort of way, Pampas Grass is native to South America…which leads to the first point: Generally speaking, if there are native plants available, these should be our first choice as natives will often be more environmentally responsible and seem to ‘fit’ into the landscape more naturally.

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The State Botanical Garden of Georgia is located in Athens. Described as a ‘living laboratory’ of the University of Georgia, on whose grounds the State Botanical Garden of Georgia is located, it is a superb environment for gardeners, children, and a wide array of plant communities. What I love about this place is the diversity of plant ecotypes represented. The State Botanical Garden of Georgia certainly has the usual array of perennials, shrubs, and roses, and these all shine brightly. The stars of the garden however are the likes of Pitcher Plant and Long-Leaf Pine and the commitment to acknowledging those plants native to Georgia; the Native Flora Garden features over 300 species of plants native to our region.

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