My North Creek Nurseries Wish List

Definitely a WOW! plant. Chartreuse, Coleus-like foliage is incredible on its own, but the blue bottlebrush flowers in mid summer top it off beautifully. Very hardy and will self sow. Benefits from a little shade in production to protect leaf color. A 2003 All-America Selection Flower Award Winner.

This long-blooming, compact Amsonia forms a dense, compact mound of dark green leaves that turn brilliant yellow in the fall. Looks fantastic in a gallon!

'Little Lanterns' is short in stature, but free with flowers! Numerous pendant flowers of red and yellow cover the plant in late spring. This selection resolves a few grievances that some have expressed about Aquilegia canadensis by having consistantly shorter stature and more intense color than the species.

Aster 'Wood's Purple' has perfectly clean foliage, and is loaded with single, clear purple flowers in late summer and early fall. It is slightly earlier than 'Wood's Blue'. Bred for compact habit, long bloom period and heavy flowering, all of the Wood's Asters are outstanding pot crops and should be used far more often as a sturdy perennial alternative for mums.

One of the most popular garden grasses in the world, 'Karl Foerster' is known for its ease of culture, tidy vertical habit and beautiful feathery blooms. In mid summer flowers open a creamy white tinged with pink. As they age they become narrow plumes of golden straw and last well into winter.

This beautiful selection has narrow (1/4") leaves with white margins, giving it a very fine texture overall. Rhizomatous, forming thick silvery clumps. A bright addition to the shade palette!

Autumn fern is a colorful groundcover with pink fiddleheads that turn coppery orange as they unfurl. Fronds age to a lustrous dark green and remain well into winter. New growth continues through the season, giving a colorful tapestry effect of copper and green from spring to late fall.

The leathery leaves of Dryopteris marginalis are a beautiful addition to the woodland garden and can form a lovely and easy to maintain groundcover. A sturdy east coast native, it forms a tidy clump that will not spread and is very tolerant of dry shade conditions once it has established. Marginal wood fern is often found in shaded crevices of rocky ledges and bluffs from Newfoundland to Georgia, west to Oklahoma and Minnesota.

Spotted Joe Pye weed grows 4-7 feet tall with mauve-pink flowers blooming in late summer to early fall. A native perennial, Eupatorium maculatum attracts swallowtail butterflies and lives happily in sunny, wet soils. 

Vivid magenta-pink flowers above mounds of large, scented foliage in spring and early summer. An excellent deer-resistant, spreading groundcover for full to part sun areas with the added benefit of lovely red-tinted foliage in the fall.

Easily flowing through the landscape, this grass softens the garden with its gracefully arching blades as they drift between plantings. The soft vibrant green of this species indigenous to the mountains of Japan lends tranquility to your plantings – especially impactful in large masses under limbed-up deciduous trees.

An explosion of golden yellow flowers combined with a manageable height makes this a superior selection. Despite its name, this plant can be found literally blanketed in flowers in the late summer and into the fall when most other Helianthus are past. Flowers form on upright, self-supporting stems but instead of the typical tall sunflower, Helianthus 'First Light' forms a nice, compact clump of fuzzy, linear leaves topping out just above 3 feet.

This durable native cool-season rush is deer-resistant and semi-evergreen. Perfect for everything from diminutive filler for rain gardens, as a groundcover, and for erosion control.

A uniform plant both in production and the garden. Extremely tolerant to heat & humidity with superior winter survival and hardiness to Zone 5 - this lavender has been tested in several locations in Minnesota and Michigan with excellent results. Also resistant to common root and foliar diseases. Blooms best after vernalization. Developed & introduced by Peace Tree Farm. Required breeder tags must ship with all orders.

The sweetly-scented tubular red flowers of this native honeysuckle often attract hummingbirds to the garden throughout the summer. Flowers are followed by bright red fruit, attractive to birds. A twining vine, it needs a trellis or fence for support.

The darkest, truest purple flowers to come out of Mt. Cuba’s bee balm evaluations—this selection has upright rigid stems, strongly verticality, and a rough, sand-papery texture to its foliage. Very resistant to powdery mildew.

The earliest blooming Nepeta we've had in our trials, with flowers starting in early April and lasting up to six weeks! Clean, aromatic foliage and a compact habit make it an excellent groundcover.

A tough and reliable perennial, well-suited to hot dry sites. The stems of Oenothera fruticosa are thin, hairy, and reddish with similar leaves. The buds begin as red but open into beautiful bright yellow flowers in early summer. Easy, dependable, a strong grower that can spread a bit, particularly in sandy soils. Great color for a meadow! Native to dry soil, open fields, and open woods from Nova Scotia to Florida.

In early summer, white or light-pink-tinted, tubular 1" flowers on branching, hollow stalks rise above a basal rosette of lustrous dark green leaves. Drought tolerant, tough as nails, and deer resistant. The tubular flowers make an excellent landing pad for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds alike!

Found by and named after Jeana Prewitt of Nashville, TN, this selection possesses outstanding mildew resistance with varying shades of sweetly scented, lavender-pink flowers, vibrant midsummer through early autumn. Foliage remains clean green while flower clusters create a tiered effect along upright, multi-stemmed branches. Expect a flurry of pollinator activity!

We give up! So many of you claimed this mountain mint to be superior to Pycnanthemum virginianum that we decided to try it for ourselves. We love it! Its leaves are broader and more lustrous, the bracts are silvery and very showy, the flowers are pinkish and its habit is more compact. Nicely aromatic. This native is happiest at the wood's edge, so it is excellent for a naturalized border or woodland garden. Mountain Mint is one of the best nectar sources for native butterflies, so butterfly gardeners can't do without this one. Our bees go crazy for it, too!

Brown cones with reflexed yellow ray petals adorn this midwestern prairie native in midsummer. Emits a soft fragrance of anise when seeds are crushed. Long-lived and very easy to grow in most situations. Great for attracting birds and butterflies! Combines well with meadow grasses and flowers. Makes a wonderful cut flower, too!

While there may be a bounty of black-eyed susan on the market, what makes Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii a dream is its ability to wrap strength, beauty, disease and pest resistance all into one neat package. This variety won the prestigious Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society in 1993 and if you grow it, you'll soon understand why!

From Beate Zillmer of Zillmer Pflanzen in Uchte, Germany. Imagine 'East Friesland' with violet blue flowers and glowing purple stems. Incomparable! Its tidy upright habit makes an excellent companion for Geranium, yellow Baptisia, and purple Heuchera.

A profusion of blue-purple pincushion flowers. A fantastic performer and butterfly magnet, flowering continuously from May to killing frost. Top ten container and sunny border plant and cut flower.

An underused but widely requested native warm-season grass, Schizachyrium littorale is a bushier version of the popular little bluestem, growing 2' tall. What makes it notable are the seedheads, which are featherier and stay on the stem well into the winter. We predict this dune bluestem to become a popular favorite in everything from dune restoration projects to coastal landscaping to low-maintenance high-exposure urban sites. 

One of the few varieties of Tricyrtis with variegated leaves that is a good, tough garden plant with clean foliage! Green leaves with creamy, almost gold edges are topped in fall with lily-like flowers of purple with dark purple spotting with yellow throats. Best admired from close by, it is lovely planted near a patio or sitting area mixed with other shade perennials.