White ZZ plants are not exactly “White” but have a tint of yellow and white on the leaves, which makes them appear very different from the regular green and rare black types.
07.03.2024 - 16:45 / gardengatemagazine.com / Jennifer Howell
How to Grow Coral Bells Coral bells bring colorful foliage and airy blossoms to any garden! Here's how to grow them. Add coral bells to your garden!
Could any plant be more versatile in the garden than coral bells? Sun or shade, it’s hard to beat this easy-care perennial. With a rainbow of available foliage colors, almost anyone should be able to find one (or several!) to blend into the garden.
Type Perennial
Blooms Tiny, bell-shaped flowers in shades of red, pink, green, coral or white in late spring to fall
Light Full sun to part shade
Soil Moist, well-drained
Pests None serious
Size 6 to 24 in. tall (up to 36 in. in bloom), 10 to 36 in. wide
Cold hardy USDA zones 3 to 9
Once upon a time, coral bells were simply mounds of green foliage with thin wands of coral-pink blooms. Now you can find this perennial in shades of green, chartreuse, amber, peach, orange, red, bronze and purple. And although there are plenty of bold solid-colored varieties, such as ‘Caramel’ and ‘Black Pearl’ in the photo above, breeders have also developed foliage with intricate vein patterns and lacy or metallic-looking overlays, as you can see on ‘Green Spice.’ All of this exciting variety makes a plant geek like me want one of each kind.
Flowers are not usually as showy as the foliage, but the spikes of dainty blossoms serve to accent the eye-catching leaves without stealing their thunder. The tiny bell-shaped blooms dangling from tall spires can be red, pink, green, coral or white, and attract hummingbirds and other pollinators to the garden.
While coral bells breeding programs have mostly concentrated on unique foliage, Chuck
White ZZ plants are not exactly “White” but have a tint of yellow and white on the leaves, which makes them appear very different from the regular green and rare black types.
Oxalis triangularis, also known as false shamrock, is an eye-catching bulbous perennial that makes an excellent and long-lived house plant. Bold, dramatic foliage in shades of dark purple to wine-red creates a striking contrast to blush-white flowers borne in summer. The leaves are three-lobed, hence the name of shamrock which it resembles, though is not actually related to. Oxalis triangularis is native to from Brazil. Its leaves have extra fascination because they open during the day and close at night.
Poppies (Papaver spp. and cvs., Zones 3–9) are one of the most beloved and desirable garden flowers, but they aren’t as easy to please as many sources make them out to be. While there are those who will claim that they are the easiest flowers to grow since they often self-seed around the garden with abandon, poppies—especially the annual species—remain challenging to grow for many gardeners. Below I’ll go over some common annual and perennial poppy species, some recommended varieties of each, and how to make them thrive in your garden.
Ranging from $500 to $5,000 per kilogram, saffron, or the Red Gold as it is commonly referred to, takes a total of about 150,000 flowers to produce just one kilogram! Now you know why it would be a great idea to have its plant at home!
How to Grow Five Spot Flowers Nemophila maculata
Ponytail palms are not exactly the fastest or the tallest growing specimens out there, so people are always in lookout for ways to make their’s stand out from the rest!
How to Grow Rhubarb Find must-know tips for growing rhubarb and getting your best harvest here! Rhubarb growing guide
Parrotia persica, also known as Persian ironwood, is a deciduous tree mainly grown for its spectacular autumn display when its leaves turn shades of yellow, orange, red and purple. It’s a wide-spreading, slow-growing tree with bark that flakes away, creating an interesting texture and revealing younger bark below. Dense heads of red flowers will appear in late-winter and early-spring. The flowers of Parrotia persica do not have petals; instead, buds open to reveal attractive red stamen.
Acidanthera (Acidanthera murielae syn. Gladiolus murielae) – also known as the Abyssinian gladiolus, callianthus, sword lily or peacock lily – is a graceful summer-flowering perennial. It has erect grass-like leaves and slender stems up to 1m tall, each one bearing several nodding, funnel-shaped, white flowers with purple throats. The flowers are attractive to a range of pollinators, including bees, which visit for nectar and pollen.
Goji berries (Lycium barbarum) are a popular ‘superfood’ to eat fresh or dried. Native to China, they’re packed with vitamins and antioxidants and have been used in Chinese medicine for over a thousand years. They’re easy to grow at home in the UK and bear fruit after just one or two years. The best thing about growing your own goji berries is that you can eat them straight from the bush – most commercially available goji berries are dried.
Home-grown garlic takes up little space and requires hardly any effort to get a good crop. It’s an easy crop to grow, spouting from a garlic bulb separated into cloves, which you plant individually. Certified, disease-free garlic bulbs are sold at garden centres or online.
Common beech (Fagus sylvatica) is one of the most majestic of European native trees, yet also makes an excellent formal hedge as it tolerates regular clipping. Although deciduous, beech is still good to use as a screening hedge as growth is dense, twiggy, and the dead leaves usually remain on the branches for much of the winter, often until the new leaves appear in spring. There are both green and purple-leaved varieties of common beech which are suitable for hedging. The purple-leaved form (Fagus sylvatica ‘Purpurea’ is commonly known as copper beech. To grow as individual trees, the common beech species becomes too big for all but the largest gardens, but there are columnar (fastigiate) and weeping forms of beech that are much more compact in size.