A passle of pinks, poppies and penstemons
We bought these pinks (probably Dianthus barbatus, sweet william) grown as a multicolored display in single pots last year. I was pleasantly surprised that they all came up again this year only in a much enlarged bunch with about twice the number of flowers. The single colored plant is maybe Dianthus parvonius syn. Dianthus neglectus. The syn. name indicates the toughness of the plant as I planted it on a mound of fast drying soil in a hot sunny location. But it seems to thrive on such tough conditions as it came up again this year and has increased in size as the others have.
The poppies are Papaver orientale I grew from seed two years ago. The photo of the single poppy seems to be an intermediate color between the orange and salmon colored poppies.
The Penstemons are of the barbatus "Navigator" mix. These are considered to be a dwarf variety and seems to remain upright better than the taller growing varieties.
posted by Ki at
5:27 AM
12 Comments:
Pretty pinks and penstemons! Perfectly prolific in profuse prettiness! (Just trying to praise with P's...sorry, I'm a goofball! ;) But the flowers ARE awesome!
Perfectly profound phrase, poetic praise, portraying prodigiously photogenic plants. Your comments are in keeping with the alliterative title, Lisa. ;) Now you've got me started.
Love the poppies, I can't wait 'til mine start to bloom.
Hi Mr. brown thumb,
First let me apologize for being so tardy in answering your comment on my May bloom day blog. I don't use comment approval on this blog so I have to click on the comments to see any new ones. Apparently I missed yours when another person posted a comment after yours. Too wordy an explanation but I did post a reply.
Did you start your poppies from seed? The P. orientale - the big ones don't bloom in the first year when planting from seed. Do you have buds? The poppies are a real show off flower. Hard to ignore when it's so large, tall and colorful.
Thanks for stopping by.
Funny how the pinks always take me back to my dad's garden. He always had them at the edge of the veggie garden in the postage stamp sized garden I remember best.
Hi Kati,
I remember my mother growing carnations in her tiny garden too. Perhaps that's the reason I've always liked pinks. The pinks have much more color than the plain carnations she grew but have no scent. The old fashioned carnations had a wonderful perfume. Thanks for the comment and reviving old memories.
Beautiful flowers. I started that same penstemon from seed last year, and am very happy with it.
Hi Sandy, we did it the easy way. Lowes was dumping them for 50 cents each. We bought trays of them. They weren't much to look at with the flower stems wilted and flowerless and we didn't have any idea about what color we were buying. The tag only said they were the 'Navigator' mix and had a tiny photo about the size of a quarter of a reddish colored one. For all we knew they were all red! ;( I'm glad we took the chance as they turned out to be several different colors of pinks and blues.
Good for you for growing them from seed. All my seed plantings for interesting plant have failed so far. Not a single plant out of 40 pots in about 3 weeks. Instructions for one of the plants said it would take about 2-4 months which I thought was an exaggeration but I guess not. I'll just keep them moist all summer to see if something comes up. Thanks for the comment.
I grew a lot of Ipswich pinks from seed before I realized how sprawling they were. I didn't have to the heart to pull them out so I'm glad that they are finally dying out this year. I love pinks, but not in my garden!
Hi Oldroses,
Our pinks have gotten bigger but have stayed bunched pretty much where they were planted. These tend not to fall over unless they are in shade. They are surprisingly tough so you may have to pull them out. I thought we lost a some last year (not the ones in the photo) but they came up again in spring. I like them because they seem to be drought tolerant and are so colorful.
Lovely pictures, Ki. FWIW, the greenhouse manager who is my supervisor says that she can sometimes keep her "annual/biennial" pinks around for several years if she's diligent enough about pinching them back through the season. Did you do a lot of that last year?
We have too much work to do so we neglected to pinch back the spent flowers, Kim. They came back and bloomed really well despite my sloth. Funny though, with all the flowers you would think we would have small plants all around the mother plant but not so. I wonder if this is a sterile hybrid pink?
We've had some pinks that have come back for 3 years now and since the plants look healthier each year they're likely to come back again next year despite my neglect.
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