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| Verbesina virginica |
Welcome to Clay and Limestone's 2012 Wildflower Wednesday December Roundup!
Wildflower Wednesday is about sharing wildflowers/natives/naturally occurring plants no matter where you garden~the UK, tropical Florida, Europe, Australia, Africa, South America, India or the coldest reaches of Canada. It doesn't matter if we sometimes show the same plants, how they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most.
I hope you join the celebration..It's always the fourth Wednesday of the month!
Without further ado, here are the best and brightest of Clay and Limestone's 2011 wildflowers.
January's Bee-Witching Flowers
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| Hamamelis vernalis |
Hamamelis vernalis is a lovely native shrub that blooms when you have just about given up hope that winter will end and warmth will return to the world...Unless, you live in my Middle Tennessee garden and you're wondering where the heck winter has gone!
February's Poverty Oat Grass
Danthonia spicata won't be found among the ornamental grasses offered by most nurseries. It isn't a big sexy grass with showy inflorescence, but, it has much to offer for gardeners who love native plants. It will grow on dry, rocky and poor soils, has attractive twisted beige winter foliage, great wildlife value and is delightful when allowed to grow and set seed. Trust me, it's a wonderful lawn alternative for tough spots!
March's Passalong Plant~Collinsea verna
One look at those bicolored flowers and you'll know why I walk the garden looking for seedlings of Collinsea verna in late winter and early spring. Don't you think the blue and white petals are a perfect match for a spring sky. Sigh. It's a sweet little annual that deserves to be sown in many more gardens...
April's Never Fail Wildflower Favorites
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| Tradescantia virginiana |
Spiderwort, Entireleaf Western Daisy, Practically Perfect Pink Phlox pilosa, Penstamin X are just a few of the mainstays of my Spring garden. They are a part of the Rough and Tumble wildflowers that make Clay and Limestone the garden it is today.
May's The Dragons At The Bottom Of The Garden
Green Dragon (Arisaema dracontium) is a marvelous woodland wildflower that is happiest in dappled sunlight and a moist, rich woodland soil and yet, it's tolerant of our wet winters and dry summers. If it's happy you'll have a nice colony that disappears mid-summer leaving behind the red/orange ripened seed head that topples to the ground and spills seeds everywhere.
June's Fill Your Garden With Native Plants
You'll never be sorry if you fill your garden with plants native to your part of the gardening world. I know I'm not...My garden is a Central Basin plant community with plants native to cedar glades and the adjacent oak-hickory-red cedar forests. Anyone who has gardened near here knows we have heavy, nearly neutral clay soils that sit atop a limestone bedrock. It's shallow and sticky wet all winter and dry as concrete all summer. It took me awhile, but, I eventually figured out, that in order to have a garden that was beautiful and thrived, I was going to have to plant natives. Tough natives!
July's The Joes
I'm talking about the Joe-Pye-Weeds, aka as Eupatorium dubium, E. fistulosum, E. maculatum, E. purpureum and E dubium (aka Eutrochium). What all the Joe-Pyes have in common are great big mauve/lavender-pink flower heads that are magnets for butterflies, Bumbles and other pollinators. Can't you tell those beautiful flower heads are the perfect feeding and perching stations for nectar seeking butterflies.
August's Two Native Verbenas
I love Verbenas...and the purple flowers of Verbena hastata and Verbena/Glandularia canadensis 'Homestead Purple' are a treat to the eyes when all the Susans are in bloom!
September's Asteraceaes Rock
Here in Tennessee we have 320 different species (world wide there are over 23,000 recognized asteraceae species). One could say that from Spring through fall they rock my garden. In fact, I wouldn't have a garden without them.
October's Little Asters Everywhere
I fell head over heals in love with the blue and lilac flowers that were all over the yard and covered with bees and butterflies when we moved into this house 26 years ago. They so captured my heart, that I built the garden around them. These ex-asters look fantastic when they are allowed to plant themselves with abandon throughout the garden. If you can go with the flow you'll be rewarded with a blue cloud of shimmering flowers that bloom until frost...But, if you need more order, they are magnificent in mixed borders.
November's Hypercolored Hypericum Heaven
Hoky smokes gardeners! Tear out your Burning Bush, rip out your Barberry and trash your Nandinas and replace them with Hypericum frondosum! You will love its hyper-colored fall display, the exfoliating bark, the blue green summer foliage, and the pollinator magnet golden sunburst flowers.
My dear friends, Thank you for planting more wildflowers, thank you for taking care of the bees and all the pollinators, thank you for tolerating pesky wildlife, and, thank you for another year of your friendship, visits, comments and joining me in celebrating wildflowers all over this great big wonderful world. You are the best and having you in my life has enriched it beyond measure.
xoxogail
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Gail Eichelberger is a gardener and therapist in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at
Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.
