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Whats Hot-November/December 2005

April 28, 2008  By Lorraine Hunter


Purple flowers, designing with ornamental grasses, fruit-bearing shrubs and showy double tulips are some of the garden trends to look forward to in 2006. Consumer gardening magazines are featuring all of these subjects as 2005 draws to a close.

Bronze, Purple Plants and Chartreuse Accents Predicted for 2006

Purple flowers, designing with ornamental grasses, fruit-bearing shrubs and showy double tulips are some of the garden trends to look forward to in 2006. Consumer gardening magazines are featuring all of these subjects as 2005 draws to a close.

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Gardening Life, November/December 2005, offers its own look at what’s hot for 2006. Predicted trends include bronze plants such as barberry, Heuchera, canna and ‘Rustic Orange’ coleus; scented plants including fragrant new rose, tulip and petunia cultivars and old favourites Ornithogalum and Nicotiana; living walls outfitted with watering systems and lightweight growing media to support hardy plants like grasses, mosses and ferns; hedge mazes and labrinths; thyme walks and chartreuse accessories.

 “Rock fan” Ted Johnston has an interesting column in the same issue on using stones in the garden.  A “stone diary” describes the attributes of granite, limestone, sandstone, slate and fieldstone.

Canadian Gardening, October/November 2005 issue’s plant profile is on showy, peony-like double tulips including such favourites as sunny yellow ‘Monte Carlo,’ ruffled ‘Orange Princess,’ fragrant pale pink ‘Angelique,’ creamy white and dark red ‘Carnaval de Nice,’ dark red ‘Uncle Tom’ and the delicious new cultivar ‘Ice Cream’ with fluffy white blossoms and a variegated calyx (whorl of sepals).

The issue also features the colour purple. Anne Marie Van Nest shares her love for such royally-hued flowers like the 40 centimeter-tall ‘Negrita’ tulip; the ‘Etoile Violette’ clematis; the lady slipper orchid (Paphiopedilum superbiens); ‘Lee’s Dark Purple’ rhododendron; ‘Ruffled Velvet’ Siberian iris; ‘Purple Showers’ pansy and ‘Purple Mountain’ African daisy (Osteospermum barberiae var compactum).

Fine Gardening, December 2005, also highlights the colour purple and how to use its various shades to best advantage – from violets on the red end of the spectrum to indigo at the blue end. And in between it features iris, petunias, campanula, lavender, ‘Jackman’ clematis, New England asters and salvia, to mention just a few.

The issue also has an informative article on designing with ornamental grasses. For example, it suggests using sedges (Carex tumulicola) to edge a stairway; ‘Karl Foerster’ reed grass to create a living screen that changes in form and colour throughout the year, or a row of fountain grasses (Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hameln’) along a pathway to lead the eye toward an entrance.

Trees and shrubs with showy fall fruit are the subject of another Fine Gardening feature, recommending flowering crab apple (Malus ‘Harvest Gold’), especially good for large landscapes; American cranberry bush (Viburnum trilobum) with brilliant red fruit in fall and winter; Northern bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) with tiny white berries, considered a workhorse in poor conditions; black chokecherry (Aronia melanocarpa) with dramatic, inky black fruit; and firethorn (Pyracantha ‘Teton’), which launches an orange colour explosion in fall.


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