Garden Gems: colorful, carefree native flowers
28 Jun 2015
Enjoy colorful, carefree flowers come fall if you plant these natives this summer.
It’s easy to get carried away in spring, when plant sales, garden centers, home-improvement stores and supermarkets are replete with floral temptations. Even those of us who know better are drawn to whatever is blooming at the time, predisposing our gardens toward summer flowers. This is a shame, because our hyper-focus on summer can blind us to autumn’s flower potential.




Prairie Home Companions
Not all that glitters in autumn is gold. Lavender-purplish purple prairie ver-bena (Verbena [Glandularia] bipinnatifida), also from the Pueblo plains, is a great partner to prairie zinnia and other short companions. The screaming red-orange hummingbird trumpet (Zauschneria latifolia v. etteri) will attract wildlife and native bees. For a flower garden that doesn’t


