A recent visit to The Landings shopping center in Columbus Georgia taught me a little lesson. I have been too restricted in my thinking when it comes to selecting plants for mixed containers, Shasta daisies to be exact.

I love Shastas, and always have, but shoot they were for cottage gardens, wildflower patches, and picturesque perennial plots....Read more

There is an old adage that you can't have your cake and eat it too, which is most likely correct, but with Golden Delicious I assure you, you can have your pineapple and eat it too. Well maybe I should clarify; we aren't taking fruit, but the most luscious sage on the planet.

Golden Delicious pineapple sage made its debut about 15 years ago and...Read more

Cobalt blue and indigo blue are terms I regularly see as descriptors or adjectives if you will for one of the relatively new black and bloom salvia, one of hottest plants in the marketplace. Hummingbird magnet and tough-as-nails are other adjectives letting you know this is a special plant.

It's not every day that a plant scores high in trials ...Read more

Cobalt blue and Indigo blue are terms I regularly see as descriptors or adjectives if you will for one of the relatively new Black & Bloom salvia, one of the hottest plants in the marketplace. Hummingbird magnet and tough-as-nails, are other adjectives letting you know this is a special plant.

It's not every day that a plant scores high in ...Read more

The past couple of years it seems one calibrachoa has been like a piece of heaven to the world of gardening and that is the Superbells Lemon Slice. This little petunia-like flower of iridescent yellow and white seems to make all companion flowers look better and yet as a monoculture plant it can stand alone, too.

Calibrachoas have been out for ...Read more

The mountain laurels are blooming in the South adding to what has been an incredible spring. No doubt under Mother Nature's watch full eye the mountain laurel bloom will progress northward in amazing fashion.

Stunning is a word I often use to describe a particular plant but today that word is reserved today for the apparent lack of utilization ...Read more

As we all strive to get our hands on every native milkweed for our states and to the ultimate benefit of the Monarch butterfly I thought I might plug its use for the other guys. Your first thought might be I'm talking about the Queen or Soldier butterflies that are related to the Monarch and also must have milkweeds as larval host plants.

That'...Read more

Calliope has quenched my thirst for long-lasting geraniums. No longer am I jealous of the West Coast as I now have geraniums that I plant in April and they continue to look great at Christmas.

Perhaps there should be a caveat or two to that. I grow geraniums in mixed containers and baskets, which is exactly what I was doing in Rincon Ga., which...Read more

The first time I saw the native sweetshrub I instantly fell in love with it, the small deep burgundy flowers and fragrance was an instant lure. I would see them at old homes and plant swaps but not so much in the marketplace.

It is known botanically as Calycanthus floridus and is native in more than 20 states in the Eastern United States, as ...Read more

Solar storms have been in the news the past couple of weeks in an almost, 'the sky is falling,' scenario but it can be happening in your landscape, too, thanks to new Solar Flare and Solar Glow azaleas!

As spring arrives in the south first, I can tell you landscapes are lighting up with what many consider one of the best of the best azalea ...Read more

Two years ago, I wrote about a small tree called Sweet Tea Mountain Gordlinia that was catching the eye of the industry. After watching it two more growing seasons, I am even more mesmerized by its elegant form and structure, its long period of bloom that culminates in stunning fall and winter color.

All of my experience in growing it was as ...Read more

Sarah Eve is mesmerizing; it's the first pink selection of Virginia sweetspire. It was introduced by Woodlanders, Inc. in Aiken South Carolina but discovered by Nancy Bissett of The Natives Inc. in central Florida and named for her daughter. Woodlanders describes the flowers as white but with pink pedicels making the long dangling racemes or ...Read more

As spring approachese, I wanted to put a bug in your ear, so to speak, for a plant you probably have not tried, the Intenz celosia. You might think of it as a celosia with the look of a little rocket or perhaps a colorful wheat ear.

The Intenz series has been coming out in some drop-dead gorgeous colors or varieties like Classic, Dark Purple ...Read more

Never did I think I would see the day that abelias were making my list of must-have plants. I wrote about some of the new abelias in the spring of 2014, and now four years later, they are real performers. At the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens we got Kaleidoscope, and Miss Lemon for evaluating and trial purposes from the Southern Living Plant ...Read more