I can think of few plants we grow that give us a much pleasure as Lychnis coronata ‘Orange Sherbet’ I just snapped this photo in our woodland garden, where it grows under a giant windmill palm near our back deck and flowers most of the summer…simply fantastic!
One of the really tiny and well-behaved groundcovers for summer interest is Laurentia fluvitalis. Here it is flowering in the garden today at under 1″ tall with lovely sky blue flowers…perfect for a miniature garden. Good sun, and slightly moist soils are best.
One of the real stars of the early summer garden are the crinum liliies. These amazing and durable amaryllid relatives simply provide color like nothing else in the garden. Here’s our clump of Crinum ‘Schreck’ in the garden…pretty exceptional! Although crinums are insanely drought tolerant, they flower much better with a bit of moisture.
Our clump of Salvia ‘Amistad‘ in the garden is finally starting to flower. This was a real test winter for this new introduction, and only 1 of our 4 garden clumps survived the winter, so we’ve changed our preliminary hardiness rating from 7b-10, guessing to Zone 8a. We’re obviously disappointed, but we’ll continue to grow what we think is one of the finest summer-flowering salvias that we’ve ever grown. For those of you north of Zone 7b, you’ll find this an amazing tender perennial.
Looking really good in the gardens now is Clematis ‘Sapphire Indigo’. This unique hybrid between the vining mailbox clematis and the small-flowered bush clematis has been superb in our trials, flowering virtually non-stop all summer. Instead of making a vine, Clematis ‘Sapphire Indigo’ sprawls to 2′ wide, creating incredible color combinations with neighboring perennials…a designers dream!