Description
Fragrant, flared, drooping bluebells in midsummer, July and August
Fragrant, flared, drooping bluebells in midsummer, July and August
Fragrant, flared, drooping bluebells in midsummer, July and August
SHRUB Boxwood
Size: 24” x 30”
Care: Light to Part shade in well drained, alkaline soil. Do not crowd with other plants, roots prefer no competition. Fertilize regularly for dramatic growth. Prune in early spring. Unlike English boxwood this can be pruned back hard. One of a few shade tolerant evergreens and deer resistant too. Also the most hardy Boxwood.
Introduced from Asia to American and European gardens around 1900 by Ernest Henry “Chinese” Wilson (1876-1930) who scoured Asia for plants.
Purple, upfacing bells for months in mid to late summer
Size: 4-6” x 20”
Care: full sun-part shade in moist well-drained soil
Native: Northern Yugoslavia
Awards: England’s Royal Horticultural Society Award of Merit. Top rated Chicago Botanic Garden & Elisabeth Carey Miller Botanical Garden Great Plant Pick.
Campanula is Latin meaning “little bell.” 1st described in Systema Vegetabilium 5: 93 in 1819 by one of its discoverers, Franz Edler von Portenschlag-Ledermayer (1772-1822).
Powder-blue flowers in early summer; feathery foliage turns caution-sign yellow in fall.
Size: 2-3’ x 2-3’
Care: sun to part shade in moist well-drained soil
Native: Central-So, US
Wildlife Value: attracts butterflies & bees
Awards: Missouri Botanic Garden Plant of Merit; Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Gold Medal; and Mount Cuba Center, botanic garden in Delaware, trialed several Amsonias and gave this its highest rating.
Collected in 1940 in Yell County Arkansas along a stream 3 miles west of Birta.
Balloon shaped buds as though puffed with air, open to white, five-petal bells from mid-summer to early fall.
Size: 24" x 12"
Care: Sun to part shade in moist well-drained soil, heat and drought tolerant. Deadhead for rebloom.
Native: Eastern Asia
Wildlife Value: attracts hummingbirds, bees & butterflies
Awards: England's Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit.
Platycodon is Greek from platys meaning “broad” and kodon meaning “bell”, referring to the shape of the flower. Cultivated in China for hundreds of years where it is called Jie-geng. The Chinese used the root boiled to cure a chill in the stomach. Mentioned in Man’yoshu, a Japanese anthology of poems written in the 8th century. German botanist Johann Gmelin first collected this in Siberia in 1754. Gmelin’s Siberian mission, sponsored by Catherine the Great, took 10 years and nearly killed him. Gmelin introduced it to European gardens by 1782. Robert Fortune found the white form in a nursery near Shanghai and sent it to England in 1845.