Southern Gardening

Today Southern Gardening is in Vicksburg visiting the beautiful gardens of our friends Donna and Richie. Let’s take a stroll along the path on the side of their home to look at their English garden. 

Rudbeckia are big, round, colorful flowers that fit great in any garden. Let’s take a look at a few of my favorite selections. Rudbeckia are wonderful and produce lots of flowers in colors ranging from golden yellow to mahogany brown having dark center cones. They are also called gloriosa daisies, and man, do they live up to this name. Cappuccino produces flowers up to 4 inches across with dark orangy petals with a brownish red center accent splotch. Cherry Brandy has deep maroon-red flowers with a dark chocolate center cones that are welcome in any garden.

Besides growing great looking flowers, I also like to grow a nice and easy vegetable garden. One of my favorite vegetables to grow is pickles, pickling cucumbers that is. Today, we’re visiting my home garden. I like to share tips to make gardening easier, and I’ve got a good one here that’s sure to help. Because of back issues, I don’t want cucumber plants sprawling all over the ground. So I’m growing my pickling cucumbers on a trellis with hardware cloth. This makes working with the plants very easy.

I have really enjoyed how easy it has been on my back growing and sharing the harvest from the salad table we built last year. Let me show you how I replanted it. I’m going to leave some of the plants in the salad table. Earlier this year I transplanted a couple of Angora Super Sweet heirloom tomatoes. The plants have started to cascade over the table edge, and the fruit are beginning to ripen. Now let’s get started replanting the other two sections of the table. I’ve already removed most of the previous season vegetables.

As I plan my landscape and garden each year, I always make room for Mississippi Medallion winners. Let’s take a look at some of my favorites. Fireworks Gomphrena is outstanding in my home landscape. It’s covered all summer with iridescent hot pink flowers whose bright yellow tips give the appearance of exploding fireworks. This plant has the potential to be large, up to four feet tall and wide. I’ve paired it with Truffula gomphrena, with hot pink flowers matching Fireworks. Vista Bubblegum Supertunia has flowers that are clear, bright pink and it performs well in my landscape every year.

If there’s one color that’s sure to draw attention to your garden I believe it has to be red. Let’s take a look at a few plants with radiant red flowers. Red zonal geraniums are a classic garden plant that does not go out of style. Calliope Medium Dark Red was an All-America Selection in 2017. The flowers are clusters of tightly grouped buds and when fully open display outstanding rich, deep, velvety red flower color. While there are other geranium colors, I like the red selections the best.

OK, let’s face it, I really like the way zinnias grow in our hot Mississippi summers. A favorite of mine are the Zinnia elegans with their long stems and large and colorful flowers. Southern Gardening is back at the South Mississippi Branch Station in Poplarville and I’m pretty amazed at the gorgeous zinnias. Queen Lime zinnia is an attractive pale green infused with warm lilac. This flower has a subtle elegance and, in my opinion, resembles a watercolor painting. The flowers are three to four inches in diameter and these blooms serve well as a foundation in cut flower arrangements.

I love plants that make colorful carpets during the summer months. Here are a few of my favorites. I like to recommend the Cora Cascade vinca because of their heavy production of colorful flowers. Cora Cascade vinca produce plants with good branching and spread up to 36 inches wide. The trailing growth habit is perfect for showing off the big and showy flowers that come in colors of cherry, lilac, peach Blush, Polka dot and Strawberry. Purslane is one of these plants that are perfect for carpeting many places in your garden. Purslane forms a dense mat of drought resistant color.

Plants with tiny flowers are outstanding additions for your garden and landscape. Let’s take a look at a few great choices to consider. Butterfly bush displays up to 12 inch fragrant panicles of massed tiny flowers in various shades of color. The tiny flowers are produced on arching graceful stems that butterflies, bees and hummingbirds love. One of my favorites is Flutterby Petite Tutti Frutti Pink, which has seven to eight-inch panicles of fuchsia red flowers. Serena Angelonia are commonly called summer snapdragons and were selected a Mississippi Medallion winner in 2007.