If you like things hot (or if you are in the south its just going to be hot) why not try some of these fiery colored plants in your garden! The colors of red, orange, and yellow can truly set the garden ablaze visually! The plants I’m talking about are also very easy to grow and just need a little maintenance along the way to blaze with blooms throughout the summer heat. Let’s take a look at some of those fiery plant selections that I think could light your garden on fire!
Red Flowering Echinacea
There are a number of red varieties of Echinacea purpurea these days. In my garden I have a Cheyenne Spirit but a number of other varieties like ‘Kismet’, ‘Sombrero Salsa’, and ‘Tomato Soup’ also display bright red colors. These flower colors are a result of varying combination of hybrids of Purple Coneflower (E. purpurea), Tennessee coneflower (E. tennesseensis), and Ozark Coneflowers (E. paradoxa). If red isn’t what you are looking for you can certainly find a white, orange, or yellow coneflower to fit.
Or go to the species original purple coneflowers – you can’t go wrong with that!
Coreopsis
I have always been a huge fan of coreopsis in the garden. Coreopsis is also known as tickseed and actually DOES NOT ATTRACT TICKS! That’s good news. It’s only called that due to the size and shape of the seeds – they look tickish – is that even a word? I guess you can add “ish” to anything. Coreopsis attracts tons of tiny native bees and butterflies. It’s an easy to care for perennial and needs very little maintenance or supplemental watering once established. Coreopsis can be deadheaded after blooming to get repeat blooms from summer to fall.
Coral Red Honeysuckle
Honeysuckle is a vining plant that has quite the reputation. However you can choose a native version of honeysuckle like Lonicera sempervirens and know that you aren’t unleashing a a fiery beast in your garden! L. sempervirens is also known as coral red honeysuckle and is much more behaved than it’s Asian cousins. The red coned flowers attract hummingbirds like magnets. It needs place to grow vertically so trellis it in some fashion. A nice arbor or a fence would be perfect. This honeysuckle does best in full sun and will repeat bloom all summer long.
‘Primal Scream’ Daylily
This is my favorite daylily. I know it’s not an uncommon one at all but ‘Primal Scream’ is huge and orange. It is a show stopper! I need to find a counterpart to it in white so we can have our Tennessee Vols daylily garden. This daylily is a tetraploid which means it has 4 sets of chromosomes. In order to hybridize it you would have to match it up with another tetraploid daylily. It was introduced in 1994 and won the 2003 Stout Silver Medal. This daylily simply screams fire in the garden!
Red Lantana
Lantana can look amazing when planted in the garden. There are reds, yellows, and orange colored lantanas you can choose. Or better yet don’t choose, just plant them all and create a mass planting that will have your neighbors call 911 when they first bloom because they think your garden is on fire!
There are many options to add that fiery look to the garden. These just happen to be the hot picks right now in the beginning of June here in Tennessee. They are looking amazing! I have no issues with planting these plants in my garden every year, in fact they persist year over year (except for the Lantana it isn’t cold hardy here most years).
The Gray Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor)
This was a historic day. It was the first day I’ve ever seen a frog in my garden. I’ve seen a toad or two but never an actual frog! Amphibians are a good indicator of the heath of an environment. They are kind of like…
Cutting Back Miscanthus in the Spring
Among many garden chores that come in spring perhaps the biggest is the trimming of the ornamental grasses. Trimming back perennials can be time consuming but the ornamental grasses can be a bear. It’s not the tiny little hair-like strands of the Nassella tenuissima (Ponytail…
Garden Questions of the Month: August 2008
Last month I put together a post based on search engine hits in the form of a question to The Home Garden and I thought I’d do the same for August. I picked out several questions that I thought were either interesting or important and…
Frosts didn’t claim this achillea! At least not yet.
It seems the frosts don’t hold much sway over Achillea! The mums have mostly wilted away, but this little guy by the mailbox is still blooming. I took this picture this morning in 30 degree Temperatures.
Random Thoughts While Mowing
Tonight while mowing I had no fear of the myriad of carpenter/bumblebees that were hovering through the garden. I was on my riding mower and said to the bumbles “my buzz is bigger than yours.”
A Few Cover Crops for a Newly Cleared Area
Recently I happened to by driving by our property and noticed a huge change, one that I hadn’t planned. Suddenly a good portion of the front of the land was cleared. It was something we were going to have to pay for eventually when installing…
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