Spring 2015
Warm Talls and Cool Shorts
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Four plants come together in a sophisticated but simple design
This little corner garden appeared in our Long Bed next to Greenhouse 10. It’s a simple and easy design to assemble, but it blends colors and heights effectively. Our plant selection includes two shorts to cover the front and two talls for height in the back—just four plants in all but the colors are key.
Of the four, the short ones are cool—a blue and a purple, and the tall ones are warm—a yellow and a red. As far as the arrangement is concerned, we simply placed the lower plants in front and the higher ones behind them. This makes the garden easy to drape over almost any kind of bed we encounter. Let’s go through the ingredients so you can see how they fold together to make a harmonious whole.
Begin with Ageratum ‘High Tide’—familiar fuzzy blooms in cool light blue
Salvia ‘Black and Blue’
Dramatic blooms of Salvia ‘Black and Blue’
You may remember Salvia ‘Black and Blue’ from Field Day last summer. It garnered a lot of votes as the most admired plant in the gardens, giving Hamelia ‘Lime Sizzler’ a run for its money as the top plant of the day. This is one of those plants where its strength is its weakness—all of the attention goes to the top. No one remembers the plant itself.
We planted ‘Black and Blue’ in three of our Display Beds, and we found that companion plantings work best with this Salvia. Adding contrasting colors around the base creates even more drama in the display at the top. Let’s take a closer look at this clearly popular denizen of the garden.
True blue flowers that rise well above Coleus ‘Pineapple Splash’
Poinsettia ‘Sonora White Glitter’
‘Sonora White Glitter’—each spot and splash is a surprise
Surprises make the holidays exciting—unexpected guests, fabulous gifts, and delicious home-baked treats from neighbors and friends. Those little thrills are what keep us looking forward to the season. Go ahead and include ‘Sonora White Glitter’ on that Christmas list because it, too, is full of surprises.
I spy…an almost all-white leaf
Two Brachyscomes
Brachyscome ‘Radiant Magenta’
Swan River Daisy is the common name of a plant we’ve been growing for a few years now, Brachyscome, that tends to fly under the radar. It’s a lovely, delicate-looking plant that grows well in poor soil so we find it useful for adding color to rock gardens and other tough spots where it can be hard to get colorful flowering plants to grow. They are good companions to Bidens, because they are about the same size and habit, but they bloom in a completely different color scheme. We sell two of these charming plants: the brighter ‘Radiant Magenta’ and the lighter ‘Enduring Blue’.
A delicate-looking plant that likes tough soil
Plectranthus ‘Mona Lavender’
Plectranthus ‘Mona Lavender’—container drama is its specialty
Plectranthus ‘Mona Lavender’ is a specialty plant with an unusually eye-catching combination of features. It delivers a lot of drama in a little package so it’s surprising that it doesn’t get used more often. We suspect the reason is simply because it’s unfamiliar, in which case we’d like to introduce you to this curious Swedish Ivy that comes to us by way of South Africa.
All the best traits we could ask for in a Plectranthus
