Start Your Plant Picks for the Plant Sale!

The list of all the plants being grown for Powell Gardens' spring plant sale is now available: http://www.powellgardens.org/default.asp?page=PlantSale! For the first time the annual and tropical plants will be represented on the Web. Special thanks to volunteer Jody Marshall who input all the annual plant information for us. Below are a few images of some of the many annuals/tropicals being grown for the sale in our greenhouses.

Chenille Plant (Acalypha repens) makes a great hanging basket or window box plant. I will always remember Horticulturist Duane Hoover's use of this plant in the arbor boxes at the Kauffman Memorial Garden, where this plant cascaded down with silvery leaved Silver Falls Dichondra. A stunning plant combination!


This Blue "Hibiscus" (Alyogyne huegelii) is a stunning tropical plant that blooms all summer for us outside. It is hard to get affordable smaller plants and we will have them! What a refreshing cool colored flower as the "thriller" plant in a summertime container.


Mexican Bush Sage (Salvia leucantha) is a classic late summer and fall flowering annual. It blooms now in the greenhouse because of the short days but won't rebloom for you until shorter days next fall encourage its velvety soft purple and white flowers. It is a major nectar plant for migrating Monarch butterflies and Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. It is worth it to plant in spring because it is very easy to grow and will become a large shrub covered in bloom by late September.

This little tropical plant is a "new" Cigar Flower or Micky Mouse Plant (Cuphea cyanea). Its two burgundy petals look like little ears at the yellowed tip of its pink flowers.


Here is a mass of the Cuphea cyanea. It's sure to be an interesting container or summer bedding plant and its flower shape lends it to hummingbird pollination.

The perennials are in and growing well too and I will blog more about them later. Visit our Web site and start your picks for Powell Gardens' spring plant sale 2008 (May 3 and 4). Members will have the best selection at the members-only preview sale at 5-7 p.m. on May 2. Join Friends of Powell Gardens now if you haven't already!


All photographs taken March 19, 2008, in the Powell Gardens greenhouses.