Today Southern Gardening is back at the Trucks Crops Branch Station in Crystal Springs. Let’s take a look at a couple of gorgeous golden fall season landscape plants. The first fall season treasure is Caryopteris Gold Crest. Caryopteris is a perennial mounding shrub that’s commonly called bluebeard. This Caryopteris selection is a late bloomer and is wonderful plant for the fall season when the flowers start to develop. Gold Crest Bluebeard displays vivid, bright blue flowers which I absolutely love. When the blue flowers are viewed against the golden chartreuse foliage the contrast is stunning. Even more stunning is the number of various bees visiting the flowers. The plants seem to move with the bees and even buzz. Gold Crest prefers full sun and moist, well-drained soil, but tolerates drier soil once established. The second fall treasure is a member of the Luscious lantana series, 2020 Mississippi Medallion winner, which Southern Gardening has shown through the years. We’ve shown selections like Citrus Blend and Royale Cosmo, and who can forget Luscious Lemonade. The newest member of the series is Luscious Goldengate. This plant loves heat and droughty conditions, which makes it perfect for our Mississippi gardens and landscapes. The plant is well branched with a mounding and spreading growth habit. The flowers are a beautiful deep golden yellow and literally cover the plant, especially when planted in the full sun. And like all lantana, Goldengate is a butterfly magnet. The fall season is a great time to plant and share yellow gold landscape color. I’m horticulturist Gary Bachman and I’ll see you next time on Southern Gardening.
