Wildflower Wednesday 2012 Roundup

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

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

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

Add  your Wildflower Wednesday link to Mr Linky and leave a comment!


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.

Wildflower Wednesday~Two Native Verbenas

Verbena hastata

I love verbenas...and the two natives I have growing in my garden are a treat to the eyes in this time of golden yellow rudbeckias.

Rose vervain with Brown-Eyed Susan, 'Grey Owl' Juniper and Switchgrass

I've grown Verbena/Glandularia canadensis 'Homestead Purple' for years, but, have never found it happier than in its new home on the Tommies Hill. The full sun and excellent drainage have kept this fellow blooming from early spring, when it was planted, all though this long hot summer. There are half a dozen or so plants on the Hill and I am more than sure they would cover the entire bed if Rudbeckia triloba hadn't sprouted there!

'Homestead Purple' is a chance hybrid that was discovered by Alan Armitage and Michael Dirr at a Georgia country homestead while they were driving  back to Athens, Georgia. They saw a patch of brilliant purple flowers and stopped to speak with the homeowner, took cuttings and the rest is history. 

We have them to thank for a plant that blooms for months; provides nectar for visiting bees, skippers and butterflies and is one of the best flowering groundcovers ever!  It's not unusual for Rose verbena to be semi-evergreen in my Zone 7 garden, but, it will die out in badly draining soil.  So plant it on a well drained site with full sun and let it fill in.

If you're like me  you can combine it with golden yellow rudbeckias, purple asters, Liatris, Echinaceas, Gaillardias and native grasses or go for a tamer look and plant it in the front of abed with sweet pale yellows and blues and silvers. 

'Homestead Purple' is a perennial in zones 7-10 but, the species is perennial in the Central Plains and the Eastern US.

each bloom is about 1/4 inch~now that's tiny

Verbena hastata is new to Clay and Limestone~by new I mean brand new, having just brought several plants home from GroWild (my go to nursery for native plants) this past week. I am so excited about this plant, that I am willing to do what I can to make Swamp Verbena happy!

A hard spot to photograph, it's either too shady or too sunny!

Yes, Swamp Verbena is the common name and it's happiest in a moist soil; will even tolerate soggy for a bit of time. They're planted on the far edge of the Susan's Bed in a newly dug space between slabs of bedrock where I hope it will stay moist enough to keep it happy the rest of the summer and will then settle in nicely during our usually wet, wet winters. That's the plan!  We'll see if the weather and the verbena cooperate.

You'll find V hastata in almost every state and province minus a few in the US and Canada...

Flowers on each spike bloom bottom to top

Here's what I like about this plant and why I was so excited.  It's cute.  It's a slender, upright plant with lanceolate, serrated leaves and it has flowers on showy candelabra-like spikes.  The flowers are the  tiniest little things and each one is about 1/4 inch and they open a few at a time from the bottom up.  Did I mention that the tiny little flowers are a marvelous blue-purple that are just what this garden needs in the middle of the time of rudbeckias!

More importantly, they also fit right in with the other rough and tumble, take care of them selves wildflowers that do best in my garden. If it's happy, it will grow tall, form a small colony, bloom for months and attract pollinators.

If your lucky you might even find a Bumble on one...Just in time for Wildflower Wednesday!

xxoogail

Welcome to Clay and Limestone's Wildflower Wednesday celebration. WW is about sharing and celebrating wildflowers from all over this great big, beautiful world. Join us on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Remember, it doesn't matter if they are in bloom or not; and, it doesn't matter if we all share the same plants. It's all about celebrating wildflowers. Please leave a comment when you add your url to Mr Linky.


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.