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!

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.

Native to northern states and Canada, this little beauty is at home at pond's edge or along a stream. It is clumping by nature, but can seed in to form a dense groundcover in a consistently moist site. In early spring, hundreds of bright yellow buttercup flowers dot the green carpet of cordate foliage. Deer usually leave this alone! Found in marshes, swamps, and wet meadows from North Carolina to Alaska.

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!

Loose, white, flat-topped flowers over deep green foliage with hairy stems. E. perfoliatum is a clumping, slightly aromatic, easy to grow plant with low maintenance. Great for attracting butterflies. E. perfoliatum may be used in border and wildflower gardens, around the banks of a pond and in areas in which it may naturalize.

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.

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!

Grown mainly for the foliage, 'Purple Knockout' has compact basal rosettes of shiny burgundy leaves that turn to deep purple in summer, then to red in the fall. Spikes of pale lilac-blue flowers appear in spring and summer, but sometimes the flowers have only calyces and no petals. We have not been able to determine the cause of this, but a cut back of the stems promotes new blooms that often have petals the second time around. Petals or no, the flowers are attractive to bees and butterflies. Very easy to grow in just about any soil, it will self sow to spread and become a dense groundcover that makes a great native substitute for Ajuga.

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.