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Gardening
ADRIAN HIGGINS
Coneflowers and Other Sun-Loving Perennials for the July and August Garden
PERENNIALS, From Page H1
blooms and is drawing monarch butterflies. I saw it paired daringly but effectively with the magenta-flowered poppy mallow or winecup (Callirhoe involucrata). The flowers are held aloft from the low-growing foliage, and it blooms for weeks in hot, sunny locations. It deserves to be used more than it is.
All these plants require a sunny site and, most of all, well-drained soil. They won’t thrive in sodden heavy clay. The leaves of the poppy mallow resemble those of the hardy geranium or cranesbill. Speaking of which, the much-admired geranium variety Rozanne produces violet-blue flowers that don’t stop, or so it seems.
The hardy ice plant is a mat-forming succulent with both spring and summer blooming species that produce a carpet of daisies in vivid colors. Delosperma cooperi began blooming a violet-pink in June and will flower well into August. It insists upon excellent drainage and would be good for a poor, dry site that has been amended with gravel and given a gravel mulch. My black-eyed Susans have begun to
flower. I have the classic Goldsturm variety selected for its large and plentiful flowers, though it is prone to septoria leaf spot, especially after a wet spring. I treated mine with a copper spray about a month ago, and the foliage has remained mostly clean. I am told that a variety of Rudbeckia fulgida named deamii is much more resistant to the disease and may be worth planting instead. Black-eyed Susans are a bit of a cliche, as is the wispy blue Russian sage, but both remain stalwart flowering perennials in July and August. If your soil is poorly drained, add lots of organic matter and then put in some summer perennials that will take moister soil. The obedient plant Physostegia virginiana is a particularly long-flowering summer perennial. The white variety Alba has begun to bloom. Pink forms flower a bit later and last into early fall. The persicaria variety named Firetail, with its slender crimson flowers above sprawling foliage, loves moisture and has begun to flower. It will continue until after frost without any need for deadheading. Armitage notes that it needs space and can get floppy. I simply cut fallen stems to the ground, and new ones return. The gooseneck loosestrife forms a three-foot-high ground cover and is smothered in white floral racemes in July and August. It will spread in wet conditions and look painfully wilted in dry soil, so place it in a moist area where it can be contained. All these plants need a lot of sunlight. What about shadier gardens? Shade gardens are more about leaf textures and associations than flowers, but many hosta varieties are effective summer bloomers. Varieties of Hosta plantaginea often have a bonus of being fragrant. Two classic varieties are Royal Standard and Honeybells. In July, a shade perennial named yellow
wax bells, or kirengeshoma, develops its budding flower stalks above broad lobed leaves. In August the plant is full of large, bell-like, lemon-yellow flowers. Afar less familiar shade perennial is the palmate umbrella plant, which has lovely cutleaf foliage and a flower stalk rising two feet or more bearing clusters of pinkish or white fuzzy flowers. Its botanic name, if you want to track it down, is Syneilesis palmata. It is one of those novel plants that remind you that the garden offers endless possibilities, no matter the season.
ON WASHINGTONPOST.COM
Adrian Higgins blogs about
PHOTOS BY ADRIAN HIGGINS — THE WASHINGTON POST
These perennials can provide weeks of blooms as the summer heat sets in, clockwise from top left: A pink form of the palmate umbrella plant; Persicaria amplexicaulis Firetail; hardy ice plant in the gravel garden at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pa.; wild quinine, or parthenium; and black-eyed Susan Goldsturm.
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