More late summer sights at the BG


Seriously, I wish I could hire these guys to replant a couple of my beds. Though I am never impressed when I visit earlier in the season, they have late-blooming perennials DOWN. These plants always bloom longer and better than their counterparts in local domestic gardens.

For example, here’s where I fell in love with verbena bonariensis and where I regretted having failed with my knautia. Neither are particularly unusual plants but they both look terrific en masse, as they have them here.

We also like to walk around the park, where the trees are beginning to color and the lily pond is still full of lotus.

They also have more success with their dahlias than I will ever, ever, ever have.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Okay, I am convinced that amaranthus in the burgundy is a must have for next year's garden. Are you growing any this year? Lovely shots!
EAL said…
I buy them as plants--haven't tried the seeds yet, though I'm always thinking about it.

They are cool plants--very popular around here
firefly said…
The plants in that last photo bear a striking resemblance to Tithonia rotundifolia, Mexican sunflower, especially the flowerheads that lack petals.

Maybe they're not having such success with their dahlias after all ;-)
EAL said…
Oh I suppose!

They looked like dahlias at the time.
Anonymous said…
I agree... that's a nice patch of Tithonia in your last shot. :) Mexican sunflower is a great plant -- very easy, long-blooming annual from seed.

Verbena bonariensis is another great plant. I grow a lot of it. It's nice in a mass, but my favorite way to grow it is as scattered individual plants poking up through everything else in my border -- looks great combined with the orange-flowered, gray-leaved Hummingbird plant, Dicliptera suberecta. However, your shot of it doesn't look much like V. bonariensis to me -- all of my bloom clusters are much more flat-topped. The blooms pictured look more raceme or panicle-like... perhaps a salvia of some kind? It's hard to see it very well in the back of that shot.

Pretty pictures!
EAL said…
I did not mean to imply that that is verbena bonariensis. They do have a huge stand of it but I did not photograph it. (I have in past posts.) That one I know because I grow a lot of it myself.

That probably is a salvia of some type.

Sorry, I never do run my images as large as I should, probably.
firefly said…
It's too bad the garden didn't label the Tithonia -- it might inspire more people to grow it.

As for my ID skills, I called rhododendrons 'peonies' for years before I actually had a garden.

Field guides are a must for some of us!g

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