Natchez: Greenlea Bed & Breakfast

Southern Gardening always enjoys coming to Natchez, MS with its architectural history and wonderful gardens. Today we’re back at Greenlea Bed and Breakfast taking a look at the fall color garden. The fall landscape is a great time to have some flowers for the pollinators and butterflies to enjoy. Obviously, these mixed zinnias with their variety of cheerful colors are a great choice for the fall season. I also like to have salvias. The reddish Embers Wish, blue Black and Bloom and the pink and white Coral Nymph salvia selections fill spaces to fit right into the fall plan. And you can’t forget about growing butterflyweed for the fall season. This is tropical butterflyweed ‘Silky Gold’. This selection boastfully displays pure sunshine yellow flowers that develop into capsules containing cotton clouds of seeds. And a plant that I really like is Rose of Sharon, which is not a rose, but a hibiscus. I love the double flowers of the Blushing Bride selection that have bold shell-pink flowers with pink eyes. But the star of this color bed is the beautyberry, Callicarpa americana. We’re used to seeing the native beautyberry with purple berries. But I really admire the planting of the white berried selection, called Alba. The berries are the real show. They are a bright, shiny white arranged in tight clusters at the leaf nodes all along the arching stems. Greenlea dates back to 1795 and the modern era plants add to the historical charm. I’m horticulturist Gary Bachman and I’ll see you next time on Southern Gardening.