Plant Portrait – Wall Germander

Teucrium chamaedrys has been described as a garden workhorse. It certainly not demanding and very reliable. It is a low shrub rather than a perennial. Traditionally grown as a medicinal herb, nowadays it is valued both for its flowers and its evergreen foliage.

Teucrium chamaedrys “Summer Sunshine”

Plant portait - Perennial sunflowers

The willowleaf sunflower  (Helianthus salicifolius ) is perennial. It is not very demanding as far as soil is concerned, but it requires full sun. It can vary in size a great deal and spreads by creeping rhizomes, covering quite a bit of ground over time.

Willowleaf Sunflower

Small but Packing a Punch

Mazus reptans

Creeping mazus is the most successful mat-forming carpeter in our garden. It grows between rocks, and in the spring it is covered with mauve-lilac snapdragon-like flowers with a yellow-spotted lower lip. It is a very tough little plant that does not require any maintenance whatsoever or any work from the gardener other than to plant it.

The Other Foxgloves

When foxglove is mentioned, we think of the biennial Digitalis purpurea, the best-known and most common foxglove. However, that particular foxglove does not do well for us. It is not that you cannot grow it. It does grow, but rather reluctantly. In both gardens I have had, you could grow them, but not very successfully. It must be due to a combination of climate (they can be killed by our winters) and soil (they prefer a slightly acidic soil). However the other foxgloves, mostly yellow, do very well for us.

Various Digitalis naturalized