While you’re strolling through the Columbus Park of Roses, make sure to stop and admire the raised bed of annuals. It’s the long stone flower bed just east of the shelter house.

Each year, the annuals bed is creatively planted as a striking visual welcome to the gardens. This year’s color scheme is all warm colors – yellows, oranges and reds – and it’s dazzling!

For those of you interested in achieving this look in your own garden, the plants are:

• Lantana camara ‘Luscious Maramalade’
• Pennisteum purpureum ‘Graceful Grasses Vertigo’
• Zinnia ‘Profusion Fire’
• Marigold ‘Bonanza Harmony’
• Cuphea ignea, aka Cigar Plant or Firecracker Plant

 

All are reasonably drought tolerant once established and they’re deer resistant. A key to the plants’ fullness and profusive blooms: the bed was top dressed in Fall 2017 with ComTil, which was then turned into the soil prior to planting this Spring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dense planting pretty much eliminates weeds, and the profusion of flowers attracts pollinators and hummingbirds. This planting will keep performing until the hard frosts of late Fall – a beautiful complement to the garden’s autumn color palette!