New Plants! | Egan Gardens of Salem, Oregon

What's New for 2008?

I'm a sucker for new perennials, and fortunately, so are a bunch of you who're reading this. Here are some that I'm looking forward to seeing this spring and summer:

Ligularia 'Britt Marie Crawford' - Big, wide, wavy, shiny chocolate-brown foliage. Plant it in morning sun, afternoon shade and combine it with Dicentra (Bleeding Heart) 'Gold Heart' or Corydalis 'Golden Panda' with their bright, lacy-light leaves. Add a Heuchera (Coral Bells) 'Georgia Peach' or 'Caramel', whose round, scalloped foliage will mimic the Ligularia's in miniature with a yummy color contrast (peaches and caramel with chocolate!) When the sky blue Coydalis is in flower you'll have achieved perfection.

Euphorbia 'Blackbird', 'Glacier Blue', and 'Shorty' - Euphorbias are wonderfully easy plants to grow. They're deer-proof, drought tolerant, rugged individuals. These 3 new ones smooth out some of the wild look that kept them from being really widely accepted in the garden, and added some rich new foliage colors. Carry on the heat and drought tolerant planting with some of the new Hebe varieties, like 'Lavender Spray', and 'La Favourite'. Hebes' smooth symmetry is a nice foil to the roughness of the Euphorbias, though their evergreen foliage and soft brushes of blue or purple flowers look great anywhere you'd choose to plant them.

Echinaceas (Coneflowers) are proliferating! There are beautiful new varieties every year; this year's include the orange 'Tiki Torch', white 'Purity', and 'Pink Double Delight'. They're becoming more noticeably fragrant, too. The Echinaceas will be ready in June - July, not yet available opening weekend, sorry.

Abelias have for years been my favorite late summer blooming shrub - they're fragrant, they support honeybees and hummingbirds, and they bloom from August way into October many years. Imagine how pleased I was to find there are now varieties with colorful variegated foliage to make them even more beautiful through the spring before they come into bloom. We'll be growing 'Kaleidoscope' and 'Mardi Gras' and I hope they'll be big enough for you to plant by summer. (One never really knows with new plants one hasn't grown before.) If they don't make it in time, then instead you can fill in your summer color with some of the new Hydrangeas we're growing!

New Green Indoors

More requests for interior plants have been coming our way the last couple of years. I hope it's because you all have been learning how much interior plants do to purify the air in our homes, add healthy oxygen to it, and send out mysterious spirit-lifting vibes to us. That hippie stuff of the 1970s houseplant fad was "right on", actually. Rather than continue with my uncertain attempts to find other sources to send you to, I've decided to start carrying a selection of indoor foliage ourselves. Call me a control freak, a perfectionist, whatever, but I know I can make sure I have nothing but the best, cleanest, and healthiest houseplants. I can never know for sure about plants elsewhere. Along with the "patio plants", like Mandevillas and Dipladenias, which we've been growing for years, these can go outside in the summer if you prefer not to have them indoors all year, or if you like the Jungle Patio look.