I skipped over some of the more startling introductions to the new catalog from Wayside Gardens in my last post, so I thought I’d take a look at them now. Their cover plant, the rose Night Owl, is described as a “midnight purple version of the classic climber ‘Sally Holmes’” and it’s certainly a rich and sumptuous shade of purple. Not sure how it relates to the faintly blushed white ‘Sally Holmes’ (with its RHS Award of Garden Merit) though; ‘Sally Holmes’ is a Hybrid Musk of entirely different parentage. Said to be long flowering, disease resistant and clove scented – it sounds gorgeous.

There are two pages new and recent Big Sky echinaceas. We haven’t yet seen the best of these echinaceas in new shades; the coming years will, I’m sure, see them getting better and better. Summer Sky, with pale orange rays shading pinker at the base, is certainly impressive though when I grew it last year I found that it faded as the flowers aged. And at $14.95 for one plant in a 3in pot the latest varieties are not cheap. I’ve news of another stunning new echinacea in a day or two.

I grew Coreopsis ‘Jethro Tull’ last year and it was excellent. This is the best of the new style coreopsis with fluted petals, the edges are rolled together to make a tube. Very pretty, and delightful in small posies, it proved the most stable (others produced a mix of fluted and flat petals) and was long flowering and prolific.

I also like the look of Lonicera nitida ‘Lemon Beauty’, a gold-edged version of the invaluable little evergreen box honeysuckle and there’s nice group of new viburnums, selections of US native species. Viburnum nudum Brandywine, with red fall color and crowded clusters of pink and blue berries looks especially tempting.

There’s been discussion of Geranium ‘Sweet Heidy’ on the Wayside Garden Voices blog. This blog is essentially to let all of us in on the internal discussions of the staff at Wayside. They mention that Heidy is misspelled as Heidi in the catalog, that they have very limited supplies of astilbes this year and that the catalog description for Indigofera ‘Rose Carpet’ is a description of a completely different plant! ‘Sweet Heidy’, by the way, looks to be a pink-tinted variety in the Rozanne style – should be great in a large container.

Lots more goodies… no more time. Check out all the Wayside newcomers here.

British gardeners should start to look for these plants using the RHS PlantFinder online.