What's Hot?

With increasing sunshine and warmer days, the perennial garden and I are awaking from a long winter slumber.  Soon will come time for the garden’s annual check-up.  What’s spreading too much, in the wrong place, or come up dead?  Local garden centers are happy to oblige with new perennials, supplied by local growers like Joe Behn.  He owns a local wholesale nursery and provided me with a list of new perennials he’s offering for 2019.  Here are just a few which have piqued my interest.        

Developing more compact plants is a big gardening trend, as people grow more in containers and smaller backyards.  One of my perennial favorites is turtlehead (Chelone), a late-blooming native of about three feet.  New is Chelone ‘Tiny Tortuga,’ which has similar hooded pink flowers but on a fifteen inch plant.  It promises to attract butterflies, resist deer and thrive in full sun to partial shade. 

As a lover of ornamental grasses, I’ve been disappointed as Miscanthus has fallen from grace over allegations of invasiveness.  To the rescue now comes Miscanthus sinensis ‘Scout,’ a green and white upright variety growing to about six feet, developed by the University of Georgia.  It claims to be infertile, so it won’t leave errant progeny down the road.  Other new sterile forms worth checking out are ‘My Fair Maiden’ and ‘Bandwith,’ both hailing from North Carolina State University.

There’s little better than hosta, those hardy dwellers of shade and sun which are practically indestructible.  While some swoon over the diminutive types like ‘Tiny Tears,’ I like to go big, along the lines of ‘Princess Wu,’ daughter of ‘Big John.’  So that’s why I’ll make room for the new ‘Humpback Whale,’ a blue-green hosta growing three feet tall and a whopping 6 ½ feet wide.  The leaves, the size of good-sized serving trays, have an unusual hump in the middle, making the leaf-tips point downward and giving rise to the name.  Bred by the late Mildred Seaver, the legendary hosta maven of Massachusetts, a plant of ‘Humpback Whale’ sold for $3,700 at the 2006 American Hosta Society Convention.  And we all thought those plant-society types rather sedate, didn’t we?  Thanks to Mrs. Seaver and all the other dedicated plant breeders, horticulture is hot!

Chaste Tree (Vitex agnus-castus) and I discovered each other in the summer of 1984, while I interned at Colonial Williamsburg.  The small trees with spiky blue flowers seemed a southern novelty to this Yankee, but new a new, cold hardy type is now marching north.  Vitex ‘Blue Diddley’ purports to grow from three to six feet tall and bloom on new wood in full sun.  Its USDA Hardiness Zone ratings range from sub-tropical 9b to locally brisk 5a.  It should be treated like a perennial plant here, expected to die-back to the ground in winter but re-grow the following year.  According to one source, chaste tree leaves were used in ladies bedding to “cool the heat of lust” when men were off to war.  Use this plant with caution.