Nursery Discount Season Starting

[paghat]

The better local nurseries are already starting their seasons' end sales of 30 to 50 percent off perennials & shrubs & whatnot. It's kinda silly because high summer is a terrible time to plant things, but autumn is a great time for planting. But I guess most people are stopping their main gardening chores about now & summer vacations are ending so it's time for us cheapskates to go scooting around from nursery to nursery.

This morning I hit three nearby nursery sales. I got 'Sundown' Echinacea which is one of those patented plants which cost way, way, way too much for their first year of introduction, but at half price is only a normal price. It's the reddest echinacea I've ever seen. I got 'Silvery Sunproof' Lily Turf which is a liriope with dark-dark blue-purple spike-flowers & variegated leaves, really much nicer than regular lily turf. I got 'Frosty Morn' stonecrop which has such bright white on its white & green leaves that it'll be great for breaking up a long patch of mixed green foliages. I got 'Goldquelle' rudbeckia which is a yellow pompom double-coneflower. I also got another tatting fern as it's one of my faves but usually too pricy. A few other things.

In all some pretty good stuff for "left overs" on sale, some of it evne has autumn blooms so don't have to wait until next year to appreciate everything.

-paghat the ratgirl

[Cheryl Isaak]

Ah yes - a great time to go looking. The nursery up the street has 50% off shrubs. Maybe I'll finally make up my mind on that dark leafed ninebark. LOL

Color me green! I saw it going for $20 for a gallon pot in southern NH.

Happy hunting. Cheryl

[Richard]

[e-mail] (paghat) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

snip...

Do you mean Echinacea Big Sky "Sunset" (PPAF)? The nurseries that carry it here (southeast Nebraska) are still charging a lot for it (obviously they know that autumn is a good time for planting here), but I was able to get the lemon-yellow "Sunrise" from a seller at the local farmer's market for a fairly decent price, and in bloom with more buds - no "Sunset" though.

Richard

[paghat]

The plug grower who distributes this perennial provides a full color nursery tag that calls it 'Sundown' & at their website they call it 'Sundown' here:

But the same ItSaul calls it 'Sunset' on this page:

This year it has been listed randomly in sundry catalogs under both names, & even the original grower seems not to have decided on a single Trademark name. The actual registered cultivar name however is 'Evan Saul' which is the name of Richard Saul's son (the hybrid having been developed by the Saul Brothers nursery in Atlanta).

There are many new echinacea cultivars, most of them compact & semi-dwarf & really very fine plants. Some of my favorites of this new area of development includes the white 'Fragrant Angel' which has a pleasant honey odor lacking in most echinaceas, tangerine colored 'Mango Meadowbright,' 'Doubledecker' which has a second circle of petals near the top of the cone, & 'Razzmatazz' which is the first true double coneflower & looks like a purple pompom with a radically reflexed short collar.

It looks like every year for the next few years gardeners can look forward to a whole new array of similarly spiffy introductions, because after a long neglect of coneflowers' potential for color variants & hybridization, there are now several growers focused on the genus.

-paghat the ratgirl

[Travis]

Sundown is 8" to 10" taller than Sunset according to the web site you referenced.

[paghat]

It's taller than 'Sunrise' its yellow partner. The orange 'Sunset' aka 'Sundown' are the same plant.

-paggers