Check back weekly to find out what's blooming, growing, or being featured as our plant of the week at the Civic Garden Center and/or the Hauck Botanic Garden!
4 September 2008, Plant of the Week: Verbena bonariensis
For those who might be keeping track, this is week 13 of our plant of the week series! Technical difficulties that plagued us earlier in the week notwithstanding, we think we’re pretty lucky to have so many cool plants.
September is a low ebb time for color in many gardens, and we are turning to an annual for help. Verbena bonariensis, or verbena-on-a-stick (as it is called in very small circles where the humor tends to run to the very geeky side), also known as purpletop vervain, has clusters of electric lavender blooms atop spindly stems. Those lean stems sport narrow foliage, yielding a plant that, planted en masse, gives you a haze of pale purple that is flocked to by all the butterflies nearby.
A monoculture planting is beautiful enough, but given the airy nature of the plant, it’s quite suited to having companions. The stiff, and somewhat scratchy, stems will happily weave through other sun loving plants. For suggested combinations, consult “Discovering Annuals” by Graham Rice (Available in our Hoffman horticultural library- http://www.civicgardencenter.org/HTML/hofflib.html ), or stop by to see ours and get ideas of your own!
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