Northeast Gardening: What's Growing - Part 10, 1 by alyrics

alyrics wrote:
Gram I re-read your post. Duh - you didn't specify just pink. I vote for all of the above plus Opal Basil. Yes - the lowly basil - it is beautiful - very dark purple and has purple spike flowers somewhat like a salvia. You can grow them elsewhere or in pots and tuck them in for the last months of the garden or grow them in place and experiment with pinching them until the other plants are failing and then let them go. And they smell wonderful if you pick a leaf.

in some years I've seen Becky Daisies rebloom in October if sheared to the ground after 1st heavy bloom. But I would use Silver Princess or one of the dwarf varieties instead of Becky which would be too tall for what you want.

Honestly the Japanese Anenomes would be beautiful but depending on variety they can be much later than July-Sept. I have the old pale pink A. robustissima that blooms first in August, followed by Honorine Jobert and Andrea Atkinson, and then Pamina is the last one that just started to open about 10 days ago. The flowers last a long time.

If you used some dahlias there are so many forms - some look just like daisies - like the Bishop series. Think about the form you want also. The mum look is not necessary and dahlias will bloom till hard frost - hard to beat.

If you want to try the Cerinthe that Pixie linked I have seed. It is a really cool plant but at my house it completely petered out by July, it was definitely a June bloomer. I WS'd those last year and will use them again next yr in containers. They were most beautiful when the plants were new - the foliage is gorgeous - silver blue with those smoky purple bracts. They greened out a bit as they aged.

Last and then I will stop beating this horse. I use old fashioned Helopsis to fill that void, the plant can be pruned - a la' Tracy de Sabato-Aust to the height you wish and you can delay or stagger bloom times very successfully using her pruning techniques. It is a flopper so your stems will easily be covered up. Other plants that are great in there also are the Heliopsis Flore Pleno - a very bright small double yellow that looks like mums the flowers are so tight, and also Boltonia. In front of the coneflowers and monarda - which I have also together, I used a small Buxus Vardar Valley that I keep sheared, along with Carex Evergold which is a 10" x 10" plant, and a dwarf variegated Hosta that also blooms heavily in purple during the time you wanted.

Heres's that Cerinthe - it looks better in person but you can't get that color many other places