Blue eyed grass is a perennial plant belonging to the Iris family. Its delicate clump of flowers range from light violet to deep blue. (Photo by Rachel Rhodes)
Spring and summer means it’s a prime time for plants flowering and looking their best. Plants that carry their beauty into a third season either with subsequent flowers blooming or distinct foliage can keep a garden or flower bed vibrant.
For native plants, Rachel Rhodes, University of Maryland Extension Master Gardener coordinator in Queen Anne’s County offers three of her three-season favorites.
Blue false indigo is a large bushy perennial, with dense clusters of deep blue flowers on long upright spikes.
It grows well in clay and loamy soils and has drought tolerance but it needs a couple of years to establish a good root system before it takes off above ground.
After that, it can grow 3 to 4 feet tall.
The bluish-green foliage is very attractive and provides a good backdrop to other flowering plants. After they bloom, Rhodes said the plants take on more of a shrubby appearance and tend to open up after bloom.
Her favorite part however, is their pea-like flowers make it difficult for bees to get nectar.
“It’s amusing to watch them try to fit in the flowers,” she said.
Blue false indigo attracts many pollinators and is also a host plant for the Frosted Elfin, Wild Indigo Duskywing, and Hoary Edge butterflies.
Blue eyed grass is a perennial plant belonging to the Iris family. Its delicate clump of flowers range from light violet to deep blue.
“This is an awesome little perennial that holds on to its green grass all season long and doesn’t have that typical die back once it’s done blooming,” Rhodes said.
Blue eyed grass prefers consistently moist soils with good drainage and is best grown in full sun to part shade.
Virginia sweetspire is a mounded, thickly branched, deciduous shrub with arching branches. In late May and June, it is covered in a blanket of 5- to 6-inch long, white, sweetly scented, catkin-like “spires.”
They give off a sweet scent, last several weeks and are a magnet for bees and butterflies.
The flowers are produced on last year’s growth.
In summer, the flowers give way to rich, medium to dark green foliage, which makes it ideal for foundation plantings.
In the fall, the foliage changes from its rich green summer color to stunning, long-lasting shades of deep red, purple, orange, and yellow.
While the late spring flowers are attractive, it is the rich autumn color that makes this plant especially valued in the landscape.
The deep burgundy to red leaves are “beyond impressive,” Rhodes said.
The fall colors vary, depending on sun exposure. Full sun produces the most vibrant color.
Bursting with flowers, hardy geraniums or cranesbill, boast flowers, lush foliage and are easy to grow, which only adds their value for garden texture.
Some hardy geraniums enjoy remarkably long flowering seasons, extending from late spring to late fall.
Ann Folkard, Elke, Mavis Simpson, Orion, Patricia, Rozanne, Sweet Heidy are a few varieties that known to handle the challenges of the seasons.
Perhaps better known in Maryland by its common name of Black Eyed Susan, rudbeckia’s upright growth and coarse texture makes it ideal for mass plantings in naturalized areas or in the background of perennial beds.
Blooming from late spring through early fall, the showy flowers will attract bees, butterflies, and the seeds are loved by birds.
The upright branches of the red twigged dogwood come in colors of red, yellow, orange and coral.
Foliage is green, gold or variegated, with white flowers occurring in the spring and summer.
In the fall, white, blue or purple berries emerge and act as a food for wildlife along with continuing to offer color.
In winter, with the foliage gone, the colorful branches become even more vivid against the season’s usually dreary backdrop.
This dogwood shrub is good in a woodland border, rain garden, massed along a slope, in containers and as hedging or screening.
Lavender is a good option for three-season color as it stays green a long time and mixing different varieties of Spanish lavender, French lavender and English lavender can spread their blooms our from spring to fall.
In general lavender is an easy keeper, but Rhodes stresses matching the right plant to the right site for adequate drainage.
Perhaps, best of all for rural gardeners, deer and rabbits don’t like them.
In many cases, specific cultivars of a plant have the three season stamp over the whole species or genus.
The President Clematis will bloom in early summer, and then bloom again in the late summer or early fall.
Its vibrant purple blooms are seven-inches wide
Azaleas are most well-known for their spring flowers and their shrubby nature.
But the Autumn Ruby Encore Azalea Tree is a tree-form azalea, elevating it above many other shrubs in the landscape.
With ruby-red flowers in the spring, it reblooms through the spring up until fall and with the dramatic contrast of the dark-green leaves, the flowers will stand out and make a brilliant statement.
Yellow flowers of the Harvest of Memories Iris last through multiple seasons.
This plant puts out at least two, if not three sets of flowers, blooming in the spring, the summer and perhaps in the fall.
