Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: New plants for 2021
It’s the start of a new week, a new month and new plants!
Lantana is an annual that adds beauty AND nectar filled blooms that attract bountiful butterflies and bees! Luscious Royale ‘Red Zone’ is the 2021 introduction from Proven Winners.
Small fire red flowers are packed into clusters on deep green foliage. This mounded form can grow from 12 to 24 inches tall and wide. Gorgeous in containers or hanging baskets all season long as it blooms repeatedly in full sun. Lantana are easy to grow and don’t require deadheading.
Another new continuous blooming annual is a fanflower called ‘Whirlwind Starlight’. Blue and white blooms have a greenish yellow center on this 14 inch plant that has a 24 inch trailing habit.
Again, this beauty needs no deadheading and, like lantana, has some major heat tolerance grown in full sun.
‘Whirlwind Starlight’ would make a beautiful edging plant too!
This time of year, we “extreme gardeners”, those of us in the northland, stare out at our winter wonderland and make plans! I LOVE looking at all the new possibilities.
This year I’m hoping to remove an old lilac and have been pondering a smokebush. There are a lot of beauties out there and I haven’t made up my mind but there’s a new one called ‘Velvet Fog’.
It is floriferous with big, showy, smoky seedheads in summer. The red-pink plumes contrast with the blue-green foliage. Fantastic planted as a specimen or hedge. It grows 5 to 8 ft. tall and about 6 feet wide.
