Studio 5 Gardening Contributor Darin Engh shares his list of his favorite plants to include this summer.
Pretty Much Picasso Supertunia – Unique flowers sporting violet purple flowers edged in lime green. This vigorous plant is great for mixing in combinations with other vigorous plants.
Snow Princess Lobularia – This award-winning, vigorous plant — ‘Snow Princess’ — has already demonstrated its potential as a customer favorite: Snow Princess™ will bloom and deliver a wonderful fragrance throughout the summer, ensuring beautiful landscapes and greater value. This strong grower tolerates full or partial sun in addition to the heat. Snow Princess™ – great in containers and landscapes – continues to blossom through the summer with no deadheading necessary. Snow Princess™ thrives in hardy temperatures and full or partial sun. Beautiful as a stand-alone or try planting as a phenominal basket. It can be planted with Supertunia® and Superbena® because it is equally vigorous.
Clematis – climbing vines; their rich hues and varied bloom times enable gardener’s to have masses of bloom from early spring to late fall. The blooms of the Clematis often change color, some very markedly through the life of each flower. Many of the clematis species are scented although none are strongly perfumed. Even though the scent is not powerful, the mass of blooms produced can fill the air with fragrance.
Limelight Hydrangea – An exciting hardy Hydrangea from Holland, ‘Limelight’ has unique bright chartreuse blooms in mid-summer that hold bright and refreshing color right into autumn when the blooms change color to a rich deep pink. The autumn display of chartreuse and pink blooms on the same plant is breathtaking! The color makes a great addition to the garden and it blends wonderfully with all other colors. Use ‘Limelight’, either fresh or dried, in bouquets to make a unique floral design. This is an easy to grow plant with reliable flowering and flower color regardless of soil pH. The flower heads are of good size, ranging from 6 to 12 inches and are held upright on the shrub. The blooms are well distributed making a very nice plant and display.
Black Lace Elderberry – BLACK LACE™ is a stunning development in Elderberry breeding. Intense purple black foliage is finely cut, giving it an effect similar to that of Japanese maple. Indeed, some designers are using it in place of the more sensitive acer varieties since BLACK LACE™ is extremely durable and adaptable. Creamy pink flowers in spring contrast nicely with the dark leaves. They are followed by blackish red fall berries which can be harvested for making elderberry wine and jam, or left on the plant to attract birds and other wildlife. BLACK LACE™ is very cold hardy and easy to grow, and adaptable to most sites. Full sun is needed for the best color. It can be used as a dramatic accent plant, planted en masse for a trouble free high hedge, or incorporated into the mixed or perennial border. Left alone it will reach up to 8 feet in height, but BLACK LACE™ can also be pruned back each year to fit into more formal settings.
For more information, you can contact Darin at Engh Gardens in Sandy or online at www.enghgardens.com .
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