Close Ups in the Bird Bath Garden

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Here is one of our coreopsis plants with it’s blooming like dozens of little yellow and red suns. I’ve recently discovered two small pots that have between 10-15 coreopsis seedlings in each of them. The rain garden I built will probably be a recipient of several as will the vegetable garden perennial ring.


And a close-up picture with some rain drops appearing from our recent rains. These are great plants, full of blooms and drought hardy. If you like yellow plants that need little care then you have your candidate!


Here is our Echinacea purpurea. I think I can confirm now that it is a ‘Sunset’ variety. I like the unique peachy color of this coneflower with its normal looking petals. I don’t really like the double mutant forms that are available, they look like alien plants to me.


This coneflower has quite a few buds for us to enjoy. I’m really looking forward to watching its progress over the summer. Our ‘Sunset’ coneflower has given us three volunteer seedlings in our birdbath garden. I like little surprises like that!


Miscanthus sinensis ‘Zebrinus’. I took a close-up shot to show the variegated foliage. It will grow quite large but I plan to divide it each spring to make more plants. The large ornamental grasses can make a good privacy screens if you have enough plants to plant in a row. If you want to divide ornamental grasses it’s a good idea to do it when the plant is about a year old otherwise you might need heavier equipment than a shovel!

8 thoughts on “Close Ups in the Bird Bath Garden”

  4. I do like the Sunset Coneflower, Dave, what a pretty color! Have the babies bloomed? Do they look like Mom/Dad?

    Gail

  6. Hi Dave, your coreopsis is striking, with that red center, what is the name? I have sunset too, it just opened all the way today. I love the color, and have seedlings also. I hope they are like the parent. My sunrise seedlings bloomed white instead of the pale yellow of the parent, still pretty though. You are so right about the miscanthus. We planted in along the chain link fence to hide it and it did a good job. We had to add a split rail fence to keep it from flopping on the ground after it bloomed, the tops were so heavy. The straw coloed flowers looked pretty all winter too. But the period after it was cut, March 1 until it grew tall again did not offer the privacy so it was dug up. We could have used a back hoe, it was so huge. I still love it though, and keeping it smaller is the way to go, good thinking!
    Frances

  7. Thanks Nancy! They do photograph well! Easy subjects too since they pretty much just sit there!

    Skeeter,

    By all means go get a couple plants. Once you get one they will give you more over time.

    Tina,

    That name really does fit. You can almost see red and yellow in the petals at times.

    Gail,

    The babies are too tiny to bloom. We’ll see as the summer progresses how much they can grow in one season. If they don’t bloom this year I’m sure they will next.

    Helen,

    This one was a store bought coneflower so I didn’t grow it from seed. The one’s that popped up were from seed heads I sprinkled on the ground last fall. I think the seeds need cold stratification to germinate. It may help if you put them in an air tight moisture proof container for fridge to simulate a winter.

    Thanks Frances,

    I’m not sure what the name of the coreopsis is, maybe ‘Rising Sun’. I think that’s a pretty close match. The seeds came from my mother-in-law’s house last summer and she doesn’t keep records on her plants. She plants what she likes. I wouldn’t mind getting some of the ‘Sunrise’ coneflowers also. I started some ‘White Swan’ and plain old purple but they haven’t germinated yet. I just did that a week or so ago so they will need more time. Miscanthus sure can grow fast and big! I would probably just leave it in place if it got too big.

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