{"id":93,"date":"2008-05-20T04:42:40","date_gmt":"2008-05-20T12:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=93"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:02","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:02","slug":"gift-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/gift-plants\/","title":{"rendered":"Gift Plants"},"content":{"rendered":"

PLANT GIFTS\/PLANT TRENDS
\n<\/font><\/font><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Every year about this time one of the big garden wholesalers sends me a box of tiny perennial plants to try in my home garden.\u00a0 These plants, which are mostly hybrids, are either new to the market or new to the particular wholesaler’s inventory.\u00a0 The vendor always includes an evaluation form to be submitted at the end of the first year.\u00a0 In the meantime, my job is to get acquainted with and possibly write about some or all of the test specimens.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I love receiving these tiny test plants.\u00a0 Over the years I have gotten some real winners, as well as a few that just don’t seem up to Zone 6 conditions.\u00a0 Perhaps the best thing about this horticultural gift is that it is a living compendium of current trends in gardening.\u00a0 This year’s assortment is no different.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Agastache ‘Raspberry Summer’ and Sedum spectabile ‘Hot Stuff’ represent a couple of important trends–drought tolerance and bird and butterfly friendliness.\u00a0 Agastache is sometimes referred to as “hummingbird mint”\u009d, and the nickname is a clue to its increasing popularity.\u00a0 In typical minty fashion, agastache is vigorous and floriferous.\u00a0 ‘Raspberry Summer’, a hybrid, grows between two and three feet tall, with rosy pink blooms.\u00a0 It will form clumps, but does not spread as rambunctiously as some other mints.\u00a0 The sedum also has bright pink flowers and glossy green succulent leaves.\u00a0 ‘Hot Stuff’ is shorter in stature than the old favorite, Sedum spectabile ‘Autumn Joy’, and will not grow taller than ten inches.\u00a0 The stalks won’t flop over and the plant is perfect for container gardening.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Over the past ten years plants with multi-colored leaves have become fixtures in garden centers and catalogs.\u00a0 Many of these technicolor wonders are shade tolerant descendants of woodland natives, evidence of yet another contemporary horticultural preoccupation.\u00a0 My package contained ‘Mahogany’, a new heuchera, plus ‘Tapestry’ and ‘Alabama Sunrise’, both of which are heucherellas.\u00a0 A heucherella is not simply a heuchera that has been dressed up, Cinderella-fashion, for a ball at the local nursery.\u00a0 It is, in fact, a cross between two shade-loving species, heuchera and tiarella.\u00a0 The new heuchera and heucherella all bear pleasant, if somewhat insignificant flowers; the leaves are the real story.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ‘Alabama Sunrise’ has the hotter-than-hot chartreuse foliage, accented with red markings in the center of each leaf.\u00a0 Its sibling, ‘Tapestry’, sports medium green leaves with dusky purple leaf markings.\u00a0 In both cases, leaf color changes somewhat over the course of the growing season.\u00a0\u00a0 As you might expect, ‘Mahogany’, the heuchera, has leathery, dark reddish-brown leaves.\u00a0 Over the last few years I have seen large container plantings that combine several different heuchera or heucherella to create a tapestry of colorful foliage.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Also among the test specimens are three descendants of tough, hardy American native plants.\u00a0 Coreopsis or tickseed is a familiar, sun loving member of the daisy family.\u00a0 The most common varieties sport scores of small yellow or gold, daisy-like blossoms.\u00a0 ‘Moonlight’, a variety of the species Coreopsis verticillata, has been around for a long time.\u00a0 It is a reliable low grower with primrose-yellow flowers and if it is happy, it will spread in a genteel fashion.\u00a0 The other coreopsis in my package is a newer variety called Gold Nugget, which appears to have the same growth habit as ‘Moonlight’.\u00a0 The flowers appear to be a shade darker with the added attraction of red centers.\u00a0 In the past I have had bad luck with new, bi-colored coreopsis varieties, a couple of which have been unable to withstand normal winters here in Zone 6.\u00a0 The label on Gold Nugget claims that it is hardy to -10 F.\u00a0 I’ll give it a try, but I’ll install it in a protected space.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My other native American is a new penstemon called ‘Dark Towers’.\u00a0 This plant is part of the trend towards dark stems and foliage that has brought the classic dahlia, ‘Bishop of Llandaff’, back to popularity and created a ready market for the new agastache ‘Black Adder’.\u00a0 Penstemons are related to annual snapdragons, with similarly-shaped flowers.\u00a0 At thirty-six inches tall, ‘Dark Towers’ fits into the middle of the sunny border or bed.\u00a0 The pink blooms contrast nicely with the leaves.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In other years the test packages have contained at least three tropical plants, because gardeners were in the process of rediscovering their dramatic outdoor impact.\u00a0 I think that gardeners in cold winter areas have now also discovered that it is a pain to haul lots of tropical specimens into and out of the house when the seasons change.\u00a0 I suspect that is why my current package contained only one tropical plant, a rhizomatous begonia called ‘Black Taffeta’.\u00a0 ‘Black Taffeta’s’ flowers are pretty much a non-event, but its leaves are the hyper-fashionable purple-black.\u00a0 I hope it is an extremely tough plant because I might as well have a sign on my forehead that reads, “Begonia Killer.”\u009d<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All my fashionable baby plants will go into the ground today and tomorrow.\u00a0 I’ll do my best to keep them alive.\u00a0 Who knows?\u00a0 Maybe one of them will become a new garden classic.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PLANT GIFTS\/PLANT TRENDS \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Every year about this time one of the big garden wholesalers sends me a box of tiny perennial plants to try in my home garden.\u00a0 These plants, which are mostly hybrids, are either new to the market or new to the particular wholesaler’s inventory.\u00a0 The vendor always includes an evaluation form … 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":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","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=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1687,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/1687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}