judy spent a day shooting in New York this week…

I was at the New York Botanical Garden on Tuesday and was struck by a Coreopsis that was in the Home Gardening Center, Coreopsis ‘Ruby Frost’ (left, click to enlarge), a deep clear red flower with a white picotee edge. It is one of three new Coreopsis in the Hardy Jewel Series from plant breeders Terra Nova, and was planted alongside the other two: ‘Garnet’ (dark pink with red center) and ‘Citrine’ (deep clear yellow). But the ‘Ruby Frost’ was performing by far the best, and to my eye its beauty was really magical.

The color combination certainly is different. Most Coreopsis are yellow, yellow and red, or, less commonly, pink and red, or red and yellow (as in ‘Route 66’). The red and white flowers of ‘Ruby Frost’ are bigger and much brighter than the all-red ‘Limerock Ruby.’ The plant habit of ‘Limerock Ruby’ always seems too open and sort of weedy-looking to me, the color dull. ‘Ruby Frost’ was much denser in flowers and more mounding.

‘Ruby Frost’ is a 2010 Terra Nova introduction, but this was the first I’d seen it. It’s supposed to be hardy through zone 6 (the hardiest of the Hardy Jewels), so I guess we can’t have it here in our Pennsylvania zone 5 unless we treat it as an annual; possible, I guess, since its growth rate is supposed to be fast and they flower all summer. It spreads the most in the series, 32in/80cm and supposedly gets up to 26in/66cm high with flowers on it.

‘Garnet’ (zone 7) was far more distinctly pink and red at NYBG than the oversaturated dark pink pictures on the TN website – more like ‘Heaven’s Gate,’ but reaching only about 12in/30cm high. ‘Citrine’ (zone 6b or 7) (below, with 'Garnet', click to enlarge) is a nice bright color and at only 7in/18cm high is a much lower, more compact grower than many of the other yellow tickseeds.  Be on the lookout, though, on both sides of the Atlantic, for ‘Ruby Frost’ – it is a definite wow.