{"id":2812,"date":"2019-08-12T06:24:02","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T14:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2812"},"modified":"2019-08-12T06:24:02","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T14:24:02","slug":"deep-purple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/deep-purple\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Purple"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Purple<\/a>The rock band Deep Purple was formed in the late 1960\u2019s and named after an old, popular English song.\u00a0 The first line of that song goes, \u2018When deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls\u2026\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>The rest is a wistful remembrance of lovers coming together as day fades to night.<\/p>\n

I think of \u201cDeep Purple\u201d because purples of all sorts predominate in my late summer garden.\u00a0 This is not strictly by design, but the result of various plants working individual magic in a serendipitous way.<\/p>\n

When I bought my property I inherited five roses of Sharon, four of which had blue-purple flowers.\u00a0 That is a lot of big shrubs for a suburban lot.\u00a0 To keep them from hogging all the available garden space, I moved them around and trained a couple to grow as standards or tree-form specimens.\u00a0 If I hadn\u2019t been vigilant about grubbing out the omnipresent rose of Sharon seedlings, I would now have a rose of Sharon farm, not a garden.\u00a0 No doubt purple or blue-purple would have predominated, but everything else\u2014texture, contrast, breathing room\u2014would have gone by the wayside.<\/p>\n

Now, in the second half of summer, the roses of Sharon keep colorful company with the rosy purple flowers and dark purple stems of the equally prolific Joe Pye-weed.\u00a0 If you are not familiar with Joe Pye, take a drive out in the country.\u00a0 On the edges of road shoulders and farmers\u2019 fields, you will see some tall plants\u2014up to seven feet sometimes\u2014topped by slightly rounded flowerheads.\u00a0 A closer look would show the tiny fragrant flowers that make up those heads.\u00a0 Joe Pye weed, formerly known as Eupatorium purpureum, and now, thanks to the infinite wisdom of plant taxonomists, known as Eutrochium purpureum, is a native plant.\u00a0 No matter what you call them, the blooms are pollinator magnets.\u00a0 In my garden, at least two monarch butterflies, plus assorted cabbage whites, swallowtails and skippers circle the Joe Pyes perpetually.<\/p>\n

Like rose of Sharon, Joe Pye is incredibly prolific and you have to watch over it carefully to curb its invasive tendencies.\u00a0 You can also chop it back around Memorial Day, and even once again after that, to keep it from reaching skyscraper height.<\/p>\n

All of that being said, it harmonizes well with just about anything in the garden and makes a great contribution to a predominately purple color scheme.\"Purple<\/a><\/p>\n

In sunny corners the roses of Sharon and Joe Pyes are nicely complimented by a purple-flowered butterfly bush that is just finishing its most recent flush of bloom, and a few purple coneflowers.\u00a0 I am hoping to acquire more of the coneflowers because they are useful, long-blooming perennials that work well in the role of mid-border midi skirts, covering the unattractive knees of plants like Joe Pye weed.<\/p>\n

Without a doubt, the plant that ties all that purple together and reinforces the overall effect is the beautiful, prolific and incredibly annoying perilla mint or Perilla frutescens.\u00a0 I think the dark purple leaves smell like root beer.\u00a0 Some others detect spicy cinnamon notes.\u00a0 Known as shiso in Japanese cuisine, perilla has many applications in cooking.\u00a0 Used judiciously in the garden, it is a great filler, providing mounds or even sweeps of eye-catching color.<\/p>\n

People visiting the garden often mistake perilla for one of the purple-leafed basils.\u00a0 Both are herbs and members of the mint family, but in general, I think the basils grow a little smaller and have better manners.<\/p>\n

True to its minty DNA, perilla will flourish and reproduce just about anywhere\u2014in beds, driveway cracks, lawns.\u00a0 Deer may eat all your sedums, but they will never touch the perilla, with which sedum, especially tall ones like \u2018Autumn Joy\u2019, go so well.<\/p>\n

I like perilla because it is one of the few things in life that doesn\u2019t inspire any guilt at all.\u00a0 I have pulled out scores of the purple plants without the slightest guilt twinge and congratulated myself afterwards for leaving behind attractive clumps.\u00a0 When those remaining perillas develop spikes of pink flowers they are even more decorative, and attract armies of pollinators.\u00a0 I try to remove the spikes just as they start to fade, because the trouble starts when perilla sets seed.<\/p>\n

Except for the perilla, my purple plants will fade as fall approaches, giving way to the soft pinks, blues and whites of the asters.\u00a0 I will be ready, but for now, the butterflies and I are enjoying our extended deep purple moment.\"Purple<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rock band Deep Purple was formed in the late 1960\u2019s and named after an old, popular English song.\u00a0 The first line of that song goes, \u2018When deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls\u2026\u201d\u00a0 The rest is a wistful remembrance of lovers coming together as day fades to night. I think of \u201cDeep Purple\u201d because … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[2154,1006,653,2152,269,2153,207,706,1473,2151,457],"class_list":["post-2812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-eutrochium-purpureum","tag-hibiscus-syriacus","tag-joe-pye-weed","tag-mid-summer-garden","tag-perilla-frutescens","tag-perilla-mint","tag-phlox","tag-purple-flowers","tag-purple-foliage","tag-purple-perennials","tag-rose-of-sharon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2817,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions\/2817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}