Thursday, June 14, 2007

Evening Primrose-Perennial




This plant fills in a garden nicely. The bunches look very nice. They grow in single stalks/stems but look best bunched together. There are no seeds or bulbs. They spread by the root system. Each stem has many buds. I started out with 4 stems. The next year I had 15, the next year I had at least 30. Garden centers will refer you to another type of ordinary primrose which has a spinach type leaf and grows close to the ground. These plants are somewhat hard to find at garden centers. A neighbor had them in her garden and I would always comment on them. She gave me a few at the end of the season. Now I have plenty!

Good: comes back on its own, likes to grow in bunches so it fills in nicely, blooms continuously, looks like a huge buttercup, at season end stems dry up and break off, transplants well, spreads quickly

Bad: speads quickly so it needs thinning, flower only comes in yellow, leaves tend to get spots from watering, grows to medium height so it should be placed in the middle to back of the garden, bottom stems need to remain in garden at season end, extremely hard to find this variety at garden centers

Season: blooms from early May - early July