The Brown-eyed Susan is a native biennial plant that acts like a perennial because of its prolific self-sowing.



I’ve been talking about my vegetable garden a lot lately, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the flowers in my cottage garden. One of my all-time favorites is the Brown-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba) because it brightens up every corner where it appears.

My crop of Brown-eyed Susans started years ago with one plant I bought at a garden club plant sale. That one plant bloomed the following summer and I loved its little yellow flowers with dark brown centers.

The next year there were more Brown-eyed Susans that had self-sown along the side of my driveway. The next year they had spread to the front bed. And sow they’ve sown themselves, year after year to create fabulous fall borders. These flowers make gardening so easy.

If you’ll be traveling to New Mexico in early August, you may want to plan a stop in Taos for the Los Jardineros Garden Club’s annual garden and home tour.

I got a nice note from Jeannie Admire of the Los Jardineros Garden Club in Taos inviting WesternGardeners.com readers to join the group for its annual garden and home tour. This sounds like a terrific event for any gardener headed to New Mexico August 7.

The tour includes four private homes with fabulous southwestern gardens. According to the garden club’s website, the tour includes:

A custom built, free form adobe that sits on two landscaped acres featuring a meditation garden.

A contemporary adobe filled with one-of-a-kind furnishings surrounded by architectural outdoor entertaining spaces opening onto natural pinon and sage.

A family home in Ranchitos with water features and an abundant vegetable and flower gardens.

A rambling rancho in Las Colonias surrounded by an orchard and specimen gardens filled with roses, succulents and edibles.

Today’s edition of Workshop Wednesday will appeal to those who like small-scale gardening.  Alpine plants, succulents and other low-growing plants grow well in trough planters. Here’s how to plant a hypertufa container garden.

I’ve always enjoyed planting container rock gardens, so I was delighted to find a table of hypertufa trough planters at the recent Denver master gardeners’ plant sale.

I’ve loved the look of hypertufa planters ever since my in-laws made a batch years ago, but I haven’t worked up the gumption to tackle the process to make my own.

Hypertufa planters look like they’re made of stone or rock, but they’re a light-weight container made from cement mixed with other materials like vermiculite, perlite, peat moss and sand.

If you’d like to make your own hypertufa trough planter, there are good tips included in a recent Denver Post article on using alpine plants to create container rock gardens or miniature xeriscapes.

Last summer I planted Echium amoenum ‘Red Feathers’ and here’s a current update of how it’s growing in my xeric garden.

At the Plant Select annual meeting last year, I purchased several of the 2010 recommendations to test in my landscape.

After seeing how well ‘Red Feathers’ grew, I can say it’s a favorite new perennial for my xeriscape.

I planted two Echium amoenum ‘Red Feathers’ in different parts of the yard.

The one planted in the hottest, driest spot was well-established by fall. It grew a large mound of dark green leaves, but didn’t bloom.

The other was planted in another perennial bed in a spot that receives moderate amounts of sunshine and water. By the fall, it was still a small mound of green leaves, so I transferred it to the other bed.

Winter 2009 was an especially wet one and there were times when this bed was covered with a thick snow cover. In fact, it was such a wet winter, I didn’t have to do any supplemental watering at all.

Thursday’s Name That Plant contest featured Lonicera reticulata ‘Kintzley’s Ghost’ a hardy honeysuckle with unusual-looking flowers.



A few years ago I picked up a ‘Kintzley’s Ghost’ honeysuckle at the Plant Select annual meeting and planted it next to an arbor in my sunny backyard and practically forgot about it.

This spring, the hardy perennial vine reminded me why I was attracted to it in the first place. Without any care from me over the winter, it sprung to life late last month.

It’s now one of the loveliest, most reliable plants in my garden.

Scott Skogerboe, a plant propagator with Fort Collins Wholesale Nursery, discovered the vine while driving around the city one day. He liked the looks of this honeysuckle, especially its round, silver-dollar size bracts with small yellow flowers.  The bracts resemble eucalyptus and turn from green to silver-white and remain on the plant throughout the summer.

Today’s Name That Plant contest features a plant in my yard that is a beautiful surprise every spring because it grows without any extra care.

To enter today’s contest, study the picture, read the clues and write your guess about this plant in the comments section before midnight MDT tonight. The winner will be selected at random from all the correct entries and will receive a cool prize from aHa!ModernLiving. Good luck!

This plant is an heirloom passed down to family members since the 1880s.

It was brought to Colorado in the 1960s.

It was discovered by a plant propagator while he drove around a Northern Colorado city and released to home gardeners around 2006.

This plant is said to grow 8-12 feet tall, but it’s likely it can grow almost double that size.

It’s an extremely hardy perennial and is rated for Zones 4-8.

The mystery plant featured in yesterday’s Name That Plant contest is a Redleaf rose (Rosa glauca, R. rubrifolia) and one of Plant Select’s 2010 introductions.

The Redleaf rose I planted in my landscape last year is just a baby compared to this beautiful specimen on display at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

I’m hoping this is what my little Rosa glauca will look like when it grows to more than 6 feet tall and is loaded with pink blossoms every June.

The plants in the Plant Select program undergo a rigorous trialing process before they’re released for gardeners to plant in their own yards.

The new introductions should be available at nurseries, garden centers and plant sales starting…right… now.

In addition to the Redleaf rose, there are these 6 additions to the program:

• Calylophus serrulatus ’Prairie Lode’ (Prairie Lode Sundrops)
• Echium amoenum (Red Feathers)
• Eriogonum wrightii var. wrightii (Snow Mesa buckwheat)

Welcome to Name That Plant–a weekly feature during the May Blogathon. Read the description, look for the clues and make your guess to be entered in a drawing to win a cool prize. The winner will be selected at random from the correct entries. Check back tomorrow when the plant’s identity will be revealed.


I planted this perennial shrub in my Zone 5 yard last summer and it’s now about 2 feet tall.

At maturity it will reach a height of 6 to 8 feet and will be 4 to 6 feet wide. Most gardeners grow this plant for its dark purple foliage and beautiful red hips that remain on the bush through fall and winter.

This hardy shrub will bloom May through June with pastel pink to white single, star-shaped blossoms. The delicate flowers are produced in clusters of two to five.

Welcome to Workshop Wednesday! Today’s feature highlights some of the work of Scott Calhoun, the Tucson garden designer, teacher and writer.

While attending the 15th Annual Water Conservation and Xeriscape Conference in Albuquerque earlier this year, I had the chance to hear Scott Calhoun give a presentation on Small Yard Landscaping.

Scott’s a well-known garden designer from Tucson, owner of a company called Zona Gardens and the author of  a number of excellent landscape design books.

His newest book is called “The Hot Garden: Landscape Design for the Desert Southwest.” Not only does this beautiful book show off his excellent design instincts, but his good humor, too. It’s also filled with fabulous design photos that are sure to inspire.

On his blog, Scott wrote that with the “The Hot Garden” he’s  “Attempting to create a minor new religion, or at least a fervent cult, based on the worship of desert plants and design.”

Honey bees are happy to find my Nanking Cherry (Prunus tomentosa) is now in full bloom.

Some shrubs are planted as hedges and others are planted for their foliage. But I planted my Nanking Cherry several years ago just to make the bees happy.

Today the shrub is in full bloom, loaded with lovely pinkish-white blossoms that cover every dark brown branch from top to bottom. It’s always the first shrub to bloom in my yard, well before I’ve had a chance to tidy up the perennial garden. Dark green leaves will follow shortly.

It’s always a nice surprise to look out my office window and see these flowers burst open in April looking a little like a popcorn bush, while many other trees and shrubs are just starting to think about spring.