My North Creek Nurseries Wish List

Covered in double flowering, bubblegum pink blooms from mid to late summer! The seed heads look like little fluffy cotton balls, standing atop strong stems to give interest to the garden from fall into winter. This vigorous, clumping selection is a delight in the garden or mixed container.

Large leaves (to 2') emerge in the spring and provide a bold backdrop for earlier blooming perennials. In the fall, numerous flower stalks rise to 4 or 5 feet and each is covered with 1" sky blue daisy-like flowers. Flowering is later than many other asters and this species often provides brilliant color until frost. Found by Rick Darke and Skip March at the Jindai Botanical Gardens. This cultivar is shorter than the species and less likely to require staking.

Joe Pye weed is a robust, upright perennial with hollow purple stems accented by huge, rounded, tight clusters of pink or purplish-mauve flowers. It is an important pollen and nectar plant and attracts butterflies (particularly the swallowtail butterfly) and other pollinators by the dozens. Its height makes it an excellent background plant in border perennial beds, but is also majestic standing alone. Flower color is darker in cooler weather.

This local native sunflower happily naturalizes in moist or dry conditions. Upright and clump forming with bright, 2", single, medium gold flowers for eight weeks, peaking in July. Imagine, a self sowing butterfly magnet, that also doubles as a birdfeeder in the fall. Excellent cut flower!

The short stature, continuous sunny bloom, and deep wine coloring of this native plant make Lysimachia lanceolata 'Burgundy Mist' a new favorite groundcover, winning over our Gardens Department by how it keeps weeds at bay and is a carefree plant. 

Meaning "many eyelashes," polyblepharum describes the fuzzy stems of this glossy deep green garden fern. Dependable and hardy, it lends elegance to the shade border and combines well with Carex, Heuchera, and other ferns. Evergreen in warmer zones.

A garden classic with bold texture and upright habit. Bright gold petals with a deep brown cone highlight the garden in late summer. Each flower may last up to two weeks! Makes a wonderful and long lasting cut flower. Provides seeds in the winter for birds and nectar for butterflies. Beautiful and versatile, outstanding in mass plantings as well as perennial borders, meadows and prairie gardens.

Rudbeckia triloba 'Prairie Glow' has our attention! With brightly colored flowers of yellow with a bright red eye fading to a glowing orange to bronze, this native beauty brings fire to the sunny border. Its multi-branching habit provides dense flower cover, more so than the straight species, and its late blooming time, starting in July and flowering right through to October, makes this a valuable pollinator plant.