Park Seed Garden Journal

Hydrangea Starlight: One of Many Great New Fall Items

Hydrangea Let's Dance^TM Starlight is the first ever-blooming macrophylla Hydrangea. Starlight is unique because it blooms on both new and old wood. So, if you happen to have a late frost that kills off your early blooms, your hydrangea will still have a goo showing later in the season. The bloom color is dynamic, aging from their usual pink or blue to a fun minty green as the season progresses.

This hydrangea provides three season interest, blooming through the summer into the fall. The fluffy blooms are excellent for cut-flowers, and this shrub can also be tamed for patio or container gardening. This is just one of many new fall planting items from Park Seed.

Coneflower 'Tomato Soup': A Hot Summer Echinacea

This is definitely one of the prettiest flowers I've seen in a while, and that is saying a lot working here. Coneflower 'Tomato Soup' has some of the warmest, purest colors you can find in nature. Not only is it pretty - it's tough to. Echinaceas resist heat and drought, and  it will shrug off pests that devastate lesser herbaceous perennials.

These enormous blooms, easily five inches across, will keep you entertained though the whole summer if you deadhead promptly. You can expect blooms from the early spring well into fall. This is a truly beautiful plant that will make an excellent focal point in your perennial beds.

Fall Planting Items Available Now!

Over 100 fall items have been added to ParkSeed.com, including old favorites as well as many new items. The fall line-up includes bulbs, perennials, shrubs, and trees. Remember, fall is the best time for planting!

A few of the newest items are creating a little buzz, so I will go ahead and share with you three items that I predict will be fairly popular this year:

Blanket Flower 'Commotion^TM Tizzy' is a floriferous little full sun perennial with unique crimson and orange blooms that will steal the show. A definite conversation piece, 'Tizzy' is sure to be huge this season. This blanket flower is also drought and heat tolerant, a great summertime perennial.

India Pink is a Spigelia with bright red, upright blooms that have been compared to fireworks for the way they pop against the mat foliage. It's fairly adaptable, thriving in full sun and part shade. India pink loves this rich moist soils of shade borders and along garden paths.

Another item that seems to be picking up steam is our Dynamite Premium Fertilizer. This is an all-purpose concentrated plant food that is so environmentally friendly it has won an award from the EPA.

Cannas: Hardy, Resistant Garden Color

Cannas or Canna Lilies are a close relative of gingers and bananas, and some varieties are grown agriculturally for their starchy tubers or their seeds. Most gardeners love Cannas' large beautiful leaves and their big showy flowers.The flowers range from deep red to bright yellow, and they are great for attracting pollinators and pest eaters like bees, birds, and bats to your garden.

Native varieties of Canna can be found in the wild from South Carolina to Texas and south through the more temperate areas of South America. Although they are traditionally a more tropical plant, cultivated varieties will tolerate milder climates if given at least half a day of full sun and plenty of moisture. They are wonderful for containers and patio gardens.

Cannas are naturally resistant to most pests -- slugs and snails may be fond of the big juicy leaves. The genus Canna is not prone to many diseases. If you use well-drained soil and deadhead wilted blooms you will prevent most any fungus that might be tempted to attack your plant.

Bright Blooms For Shade Gardens

Shades gardens are a fun project that forces the gardener to be creative. Most plants that thrive in low light are monotone and maybe even a little drab, but there are a few colorful plants that can really make the darker areas of your garden shine.

Most shade gardens start with an interesting blanket of ground covers and plants grown for foliage interest. Vincas and Clematis make excellent ground covers and climbers and their colorful blooms contrast well with the dark foliage. Heucheras and Hostas comes in many shades and shapes, providing exciting foliage interest.

There are, in fact, a few really beautiful flowers that will thrive in the low light and contrast well with the deep colors of the shade foliage. Here are a few varieties perfect for shade garden blooms:

Aquilegia 'Blackcurrant Ice'
Lenten Rose 'Royal Heritage'
Bellflower 'Samantha'

Check out other plant for Full Shade and Part Shade.

Dahlias: Great Flowers for Warm, Dry Climates

Dahlias are the perfect perennials for those warmer, drier zones. They love full sun and prefer sandy, well-draining soil. They are also fairly versatile in the landscape, ranging in size from the short little border plants to the towering stems and full blossoms of the larger varieties that make great colorful backdrops to the rest of your flower garden.

Park Seed offers a huge variety of Dahlias online, including mixes and collections. Dahlia 'Dark Angels Dragon Ball' is a customer favorite with a really unique look. 'Dragon Ball' has a very surreal look -- the brightly colored geometric blooms really stand out against the dark foliage. This is a more compact Dahlia, perfect for containers. Another top seller, Dahlia 'Lucca Johanna', is billed as the "perfect cut flower." The long stems reach up to 4 feet, topped with big beautiful double blooms that gradient from a pink edge to white to a deep primrose center.

Cool Colors for Hot Summers

I love the reds, oranges, pinks, and whites of many great sun gardens.  There's something about cool blues, greens, and lavenders, though, that just seems to explode in a bright, hot summer garden.  Cool colors draw the eye and add fantastic contrast, especially in hotter areas.  They have a pleasant calming effect, and they very often shimmer beautifully in the low light of a summer evening, be it moon or fire. 

For brilliant blues that stand up to serious heat, you can't beat Stoke's Aster Peachie's Pick.  It's a nice, tight evergreen with large, bright blue flowers that stick around for a long time in midsummer.  It grows well from full sun to part shade, and thrives all the way to zone 9.  Plus, it's a native, so it's a great survivor.  It's also part of our Cool Colors Sun Collection this year, along with Delphinium Magic Fountains Mix and our new Bellflower 'Summertime Blues.'

Heuchera in the Heat

In the last couple of years we've gotten a lot of requests from customers for Coral Bells that perform better in the hotter summers that many of us have been experiencing.  We're really happy this year to be able to offer two new plants that fit the bill perfectly.  Heuchera 'Southern Comfort' and Heuchera 'Mahogany' are two of the very best heat-tolerant Coral Bells that we've ever seen around here.  Both are products of amazing breeding advances that have been made in recent years.

Heuchera are prized for the full, spectacularly-colored foliage that they bring without too much effort on your part.  They are unusually vigorous plants, growing with full, neat habits that very rarely get straggly or sparse.  They look great in your garden year round, most getting even more beautiful in the cooler weather.  In recent years the red, copper, brown, and yellow colors have become ever more popular as accent plants that can really help everything else in the garden to pop.  They also feature creamy-white blooms on tall stems for part of the year.  They're especially great in border plantings in part shade (depending on zone), or as a neat accent in mixed containers.

Brunnera Spring Yellow Brightens the Shade

Shade gardening can be tough.  One problem that a lot of gardeners have in their shady areas is that they tend to be a little monochromatic.  The flowers are generally less profuse,and the foliage is mostly a dark green.  There are, of course, Hostas that feature different colors, but why limit yourself?  One other option is Brunnera Spring Yellow, new to Park Seed this fall. 

This Brunnera's leaves open pure yellow and keep golden tones, mingled with streaks and speckles of chartreuse and green, throughout the summer.  This foliage piles up in a healthy, full mound of gold about 15 inches high.  The best thing about this interesting shade perennial, though, is the sprays of tiny blue flowers that it acquires in mid-spring.

Brunnera Spring Yellow is hardy all the way to zone 3, so it's a great shady option for more difficult climates.

What is an Itoh Peony?

As hybridization techniques get more advanced every year, it seems that we are constantly deluged with new varieties of nearly every plant in the garden.  In this context, it seems difficult to imagine that not that long ago much of what is relatively commonplace today was considered impossible.  Such is the case with the Itoh Peonies.  Because of their different flowering times and distant relationship within the genus, interbreeding Tree Peonies and Herbaceous Peonies was thought impossible until 1948, when Japanese breeder Toichi Itoh did it.  It is said that he had tried tens of thousands of crosses before succeeding.  Now these Intersectional Peonies (so called because they are between the two major Peony sections, or groups) are commonly called Itoh Peonies in his honor.

Sadly, Itoh passed away before seeing any of his creations bloom.  He almost certainly would have been very pleased with the results, though.  Itoh hybrids are just as he'd hoped, having the best characteristics of both herbaceous and tree peonies.  They are vigorous, easy to grow, and very long-lived.  They are relatively low plants, rarely growing taller than 45 inches, but they feature the large blooms of tree peonies held up on sturdy stems.  The flowers of Itohs are often in more vibrant colors even than the plants from which they are bred.

Intersectional Peonies are still rather uncommon in gardens.  Because they are difficult to breed and perform exceptionally, they are highly sought-after in many gardening communities, and in many cases cost hundreds of dollars.  We are extremely pleased to have a supply of Itoh hybrids available from Park Seed this fall, including the Itoh Peony 'First Arrival,' which is more tolerant of heat than most other peonies, and the Peony Kopper Kettle, which features blooms of a stunning coppery tone.