I bought a Basket Marino Heliotrope in a 4 inch container yesterday. It has purple blue flowers and purple/dark green foliage and grows to 16 inches tall.
Another name for heliotrope is cherry pie flower.
Many heliotropes grow to 4 foot tall and wide attractive shrubs and they prefer sun or part shade, and shelter from wind.
Most people grow Heliotrope for its delicious sweet scent, though the tiny flowers are pretty too. The scent is similar to vanilla.
The flowers can be white, mauve or purple.
Heliotrope is considered half-hardy, to 40 degrees F. so needs to be over-wintered indoors in many areas.
I also bought some liquid seaweed as a treat for my vegetables and flowers.
What did you plant this week?
A B C's in Green
The trees are God's great alphabet;
With them He writes in shining green
Across the world His thoughts serene.
He scribbles poems across the sky
With a gay, leafy lettering,
For us and for our bettering.
The wind pulls softly at His page,
And every star and bird
Repeats in dutiful delight His word,
And every blade of grass
Flutters to class.
Like a slow child that does not heed,
I stand at summer's knees,
And from the primer of the wood
I spell that life and love are good,
I learn to read.
poem by Leonora Speyer
I love the various shades of blue in lobelias, the robin's egg blue, the deep sky blue and the midnight blue too.
I often buy a six pack of lobelias to tuck in to containers with other flowers. They grow about 3 inches tall and flow down over the sides in a graceful manner.
Trailing varieties can flow downward up to 18 inches.
You can also find white, pink and lavendar lobelia. A favorite edging variety is Cambridge Blue and for trailing Cascade Mixed.
Lobelia are "half hardy" to 32 degrees (zone 10) and I think of them as an annual.
They spark up containers of mixed flowers like pansies, violets, godetias and nasturtiums.
Do you have some container plants to recommend?
