Enough already, Better Homes & Gardens, I’ve coveted 80% of your New Trees and Shrubs for 2012, and it’s time for me to get to work. Thanks to the plant breeders of the world this seems to be a banner year for introductions and even with my garden limitations, there are plenty to drool over. This Callicarpa is particularly appealing because it’s foliage will make it earn its space even if it doesn’t get enough sun to produce berries, like my poor Early Amethyst which has never repeated its initial nursery-bred crop, and just sits there in my bed looking like any other homely green-leaved micro-shrub.
Summer Snow Beautyberry (Callicarpa)
March 8, 2012 at 1:33 pm (Plants to remember to try)
Tags: native, Opposite, perennial, serrate, Shrub, simple leaf, variegated
Glory Be…A Fragrant Hydrangea! Golden Crane Hydrangea
March 8, 2012 at 12:47 pm (Plants to remember to try)
Tags: deciduous, flower, Fragrance ID, juglone (walnut) tolerant, Opposite, perennial, shade tolerant, Shrub, simple leaf
A beautiful new introduction from Monrovia, this lacecap (Hydrangea angustipetala ‘MonLongShou’) has a fragrance that their site claims “will perfume an entire garden!” We’ll just have to see about that, but even if the boast is exaggerated, its unusual flowers will add to my chartreuse corner nicely.
As featured in Better Homes & Gardens’ “New Trees and Shrubs for 2012.”
Lespedeza thunbergii: Bush Clover
January 17, 2011 at 2:16 pm (Plants to remember to try)
Tags: Blooms new wood, deciduous, drought tolerant, elliptical, flower, multi-stemmed, perennial, Shrub, simple leaf
Imperata cylindrica ‘Rubra’: Japanese blood grass
January 17, 2011 at 1:35 pm (Plants to remember to try)
Tags: Ornamental grass, perennial
Disporum sessile ‘Variegatum’ Variegated fairy bells
March 17, 2010 at 4:45 pm (Plants to remember to try)
Tags: deciduous, Ground cover, perennial, shade tolerant, variegated
Actaea simplex (syn. Cimicifuga racemosa) ‘Hillside Black Beauty’, black bugbane
July 12, 2009 at 3:45 pm (A Plant-a-Day(ish))
Tags: deciduous, Opposite, palmate lobed, perennial, pinnately compound, serrate
- Shrub
- Leaf front
- Leaf back
- Flower bud
Identifying characteristics:
1. Large bi- or tri-pinnately compound leaves with finely cut palmately lobed leaflets
2. Fragrant pinkish-white bottle-brush panicle blooms in late summer/early fall
3. Dark purple-black foliage (cultivar ID)








