Southern Gardening

When it’s hot in the summer months like it has been lately, I always look for low-maintenance plants that carry the color load. I imagine I’m not alone.

Plants that look good massing over a landscape bed are smart choices. My go-to plant for these conditions is the colorful sweet potato vine.

I’ve been growing ornamental sweet potato vine for about 20 years. The first selection I ever planted was Margarita, which has large, lime-green leaves. I like the vigorous growth, but to say this plant is unruly is an understatement.

Some of the most familiar faces seen in Mississippi during the summer are found in our gardens.

Most gardeners across the state recognize the yellow petals and dark centers of Black-eyed Susans. If you have admired them from afar in the past, now is the time to bring some home. There are many selections that look great in the landscape.

Most people I know like to celebrate our nation’s birthday with fireworks, and gardening and fireworks have something in common.

When the Chinese invented fireworks, they gave the individual shells the names of the showy flowers they resembled after exploding in the sky. One of the most common fireworks is an expanding circle of stars and is called a peony. Others have much larger expanding rings of stars and are called dahlia. When long trailing streaks are added, the firework becomes a chrysanthemum.

Because Mississippi landscapes get so hot in the summer, one of my favorite go-to plants is the lantana. This is a great plant that thrives in the heat and humidity of summer, providing consistently bright colors and nonstop blooming through summer and into fall.

Lantana is available in a variety of sizes and colors. While many of the older lantana selections are large landscape plants, I really like the newer selections that have a smaller growth potential. Smaller plants open up an entirely new landscape option for lantana.

Now that the truly hot days of summer have arrived, vitex is ready to show its colors. This is one of the few plants that make Mississippi gardeners and nongardeners alike stop and take notice.

Many people call with questions about the beautiful, blue flowering shrubs we have at the Mississippi State University Coastal Research and Extension Center in Biloxi. Whenever I need to take a little break, the gorgeous purplish-blue flowers of the vitex right outside my window provide an ideal location.

Last month, I wrote about getting mom the perfect Mother’s Day rose. With Father’s Day just a couple of weeks away, it’s gift time again. I’ve always enjoyed getting flowers as a gift, and I think a lot of other dads appreciate them as well.

But what do dads really want for Father’s Day, besides a chance to barbeque and watch the finish of the U.S. Open? Tools! As Scotty from Star Trek always said, “You need the right tool for the right job.” Nowhere is this truer than in the garden.

You can hardly miss the yellow flowers of Coreopsis lanceolata along highways in the summer, so it’s easy to see why this is the state wildflower of Mississippi.

Several species of the plant fall under the common name of tickseed. Coreopsis lanceolata grows up to 2 feet tall along roadsides and in prairie-type sites. Its flowers are daisy-like with bright yellow petals and centers.

A dizzying array of new plants for the home landscape and garden are promoted every year, and several got their starts along our roadsides and ditches.

Horticulturists often say that many of our landscape plants are only a step or two out of the ditch. One of my favorite ditch-loving varieties that bloom each spring is Queen Anne’s Lace. Some people consider them weeds, but I believe they have many worthy qualities.

Did you know bells work well in the landscape?

For years, one of my favorite landscape plants has been Heuchera, commonly called coral bells. I don’t think you can beat the landscape punch of texture and color these plants bring. Coral bells bloom, but I grow them strictly for the foliage.

I’m gaining appreciation for another “bell” in my garden called Heucherella, or foamy bells. These plants are hybrids, the result of crossing Heuchera and the closely related Tiarella (foam flower).

There’s nothing like preparing a meal using vegetables that were picked only five minutes earlier. That goal drives the efforts of many home gardeners.

But many people, especially those new to gardening, are under the misconception that a vegetable garden is a lot of work. Who wants to go out and take care of the weeding after you’ve worked all day and it’s 90 degrees outside? Besides, who has the room needed for a garden?

Truth be told, you only need a small garden or even a patio to enjoy fresh-grown vegetables in the summer and year-round.

Flowers are always high on the gift list for Mother’s Day, and rose plants for the garden are a great way to remember the day year after year.

There are lots of roses from which to choose. Shrub roses are really popular and pretty easy to grow and maintain in the landscape. Knockouts may be the most well-known of this group.

With the chance of any more spring freezes getting lower by the day, the typical home gardener is out looking for plants for when the summer temperatures start to rise. Annual flowering vinca is one that really brightens up our Mississippi summer landscapes.

Annual flowering vinca has attractive foliage and gorgeous flowers. The foliage is a glossy, dark green and has a prominent rib in the middle of the leaf. This coloration makes for a fantastic background to show off its purple, red, pink and white flowers.

I’m ready for warm weather. I’ve had it with the cold winter that seemed much longer than it actually was. Bring on the summer garden.

In my opinion, there are a couple of plants that seem to just scream “SUMMER.” Zinnia is one of them.

One zinnia that is forgotten in some gardens is the family of Zinnia elegans, the cutting zinnia. Benary’s Giant zinnia is a must-have for any home gardener who wants long-lasting cut flowers all summer.

This winter we have seen some mighty cold weather in our gardens and landscapes. As a result, we’ll see damage to some landscape plants and we’ll lose others. And with some plants, there will be surprises.

For example, I left an unprotected amaryllis in my garden that experienced a low temperature of 15 degrees -- not once, but twice. This weekend I found the amaryllis pushing new leaves. I was able to separate and pot five bulblets that were also growing.

Spring is one of my favorite times in the garden because it is the transition from what seemed like a long, cold winter to colorful landscapes and gardens full of flowers in the summer.

I have always loved the spring-flowering bulbs, especially daffodils. These brightly colored flowers are a welcome sight when spring temperatures are still cool.

Shopping in a garden center in the spring confronts visitors with an almost dizzying array of new plants with flower colors that seem to go beyond our imagination.

But today, I’m not writing about any of those plants. I want you to consider an old-time garden staple that many gardeners forget about -- the nasturtium. I’ve been growing nasturtiums in my garden and landscape for the past couple of years and couldn’t be happier with the results.

The signs are all around us.

Red maples and redbuds are flowering, and yellow jessamine is scrambling and blooming along fences and way up in trees. This winter’s low temperatures have the ornamental pears really putting on a show.

Daylight Savings Time has kicked in, and we’re almost to the Spring Equinox. This can only mean one thing: Warmer weather has to show up sometime in the near future.

The dreary conditions of winter have made me ready for the warm days of spring and summer. I’ve been giving a lot thought to the types of plants that provide maximum color with minimum effort.

As much as we all want to believe it’s possible, there’s no such thing as a maintenance-free landscape and garden. However, a couple of plants that I definitely will have in my landscape this spring are calibrachoa and verbena. I think you should have them, too.

With St. Patrick’s Day almost here, I’m reminded of the good old days trying to find lucky four-leaf clovers in my lawn as a kid. Of course, some years it was hard because clover is a weed and my dad would spray to get rid of them.

Clover normally has three leaves, but sometimes a mutation produces a fourth leaf. When I found one, I was sure good luck would come my way. Little did I know that this belief has a long history. Four-leaf clovers were considered an omen of good fortune by ancient Celtic peoples.

There’s a mystique about heirloom tomatoes that causes me to get several phone calls each spring from gardeners interested in growing these fascinating plants.

Let’s set one thing straight right now. There isn’t just one heirloom tomato; there are literally hundreds. These are not the perfect mass-produced hybrid tomatoes found in the seed racks and transplants at the garden center or in the bins of the grocery store.

They’re colorful, with a range from bright red, orange and yellow to mahogany brown. They even have stripes. Many are lumpy and bumpy.