Design

A new plant (to me) appeared this summer in local plant sales: Mexican hyssop . Agastache mexicana belongs to a large, widespread genus, with species native to a variety of habitats, predominately in dry hilly areas of the Southwestern U.S., Mexico, Japan, and China. There are already lots of selections, but I'm quite keen on the one that I obtained from a vendor at the Botanical Gardens of Asheville and the similar one that we had at our Garden plant sale this fall. I thought I had a image of it sprawling out of the oak-half barrel, but apparently only kept this one, of a overnighting carpenter bee on a flower. Bees and hummingbirds favor its large, nectar-rich flowers -- and, it has a long flowering time, so there's not much NOT to like about that.

I'm quite fond of hyssops ( Agastache spp). Southwestern U.S. and Mexican natives, they include all sorts of delightful plants that are well-suited to our often droughty summers. Hummingbirds like to visit their flowers, and they're drought-tolerant, which first got me interested in them , but their variety of forms and flower shapes is equally entrancing. I planted Mexican hyssop ( Agastache mexicana ) in an oak half-barrel near the porch early in the summer. The hummingbirds have been enjoying it.

Gaillardia with flower fly Rudbeckia subtomentosa ' Henry Eiler ' is an unusual and robust selection of a midwestern black-eyed Susan -- the ray petals have a lovely rolled edge. I've had fun learning more about western Agastache species -- there are some great candidates. I don't know what the species of this cultivar is, but it certainly is striking. It's Agastache 'Summer Love' from Terra Nova Nursery.

I spent a wonderful morning in the garden: deadheading some early-flowering asters, trimming old stems, cutting back the leggy Agastache (anise-hyssop) to encourage branching, and snipping back spent Salvia flowers. It's fun to tweak borders and vegetable garden blocks; this morning I focused on the shed border, moving a couple of plants that needed more space, or a different site, and freeing the edges from the inevitable Bermuda grass invasion. I redid several containers near the potting bench, too, whose perennials had outgrown their pot, and created new plantings with shade-tolerant Heuchera (coral root or alum root), including one of the lime-green leaved ones I'd bought on a whim). I'm enjoying this apricot Agastache -- I've forgotten the species (hopefully, I saved the tag or mentioned it in a blog post) -- its light open flowering pattern is lovely against the shed wall.