This late-blooming, easy-care perennial lights up the garden from midsummer to late fall with a spray of asterlike flowers
When my budding interests in horticulture started developing in junior eminent school , I make out acrossHortus Third , an encyclopedic tome of gardening compiled in the 1970s . discover about plant from my dada while working on landscape installations , and then looking them up inHortus Thirdafter 60 minutes , I grow a common sense of wonder about plant multifariousness both in the rude world and in finish in our garden and landscape painting . How could a genus discover inHortus Thirdsuch asMichelia(later reclassified asMagnolia ) have “ about 50 species of evergreen trees and bush ” but only eight list ? What about the other 42 species ? Were they unworthy of cultivation , or had we simply not examine the other ones yet ? With many genus , the latter often proves to be the type . It turns out that the world of horticulture often look out over many suitable plant .
Smallhead doll’s daisy is a more well-behaved alternative to white doll’s daisy
A pure representative of this phenomenon is smallhead doll ’s daisy ( Boltoniadiffusa , Zones 5–9 ) . There are seven recognized species ofBoltonia , six being native to the United States and the 7th one from eastern Asia . All are herbaceous perennial known for their profusion of mostly white daisylike bloom . For the longest time only white doll ’s daisy , or sham aster ( Boltonia asteroides , Zones 3–10 ) , was known and grown . In southerly U.S. gardens , white doll ’s daisy flops over and makes a less than pleasing garden subject , despite being aboriginal from southerly Canada southward to the Gulf Coast . In 2015 , landscape architect Tres Fromme from Sanford , Florida , brought another specie to my aid , one that was not mentioned inHortus Third . Smallhead doll ’s daisy is aboriginal to the southeastern and south - central United States . Tres used this industrial plant in design atAtlanta Botanical Garden , and it has grown spectacularly well there . We determine to try it atTulsa Botanic Garden , where I was working at the time . To say it performed beautifully would be an understatement . To hump that I by and by discovered it growing as a native perennial in a rock quarry in southerly Oklahoma only serve as one of those serendipitous and yet apparently preordained moments . As Darth Vader might say , I was destine to mature this plant .
This plant has a long bloom period and is extremely easy to grow
If , like me , you admire using “ see - through ” plants in your garden , then face no further . Southern doll ’s daisy is a plant life that ( a ) look respectable when not in bloom , ( b ) stand up its soil in the garden without taking over , ( c ) does not fall through over to touch the land when it come into bloom , and ( d ) is easy to grow — just add soil . This perennial prime from approximately July through November , with yellow disk flowers and ray flowers that are clean to light-headed purpleness . It takes full Dominicus and can develop in moist or dry soil . It can pass an impressive sizing , up to 6 feet tall and about 4 feet encompassing .
Southern doll ’s daisy displays a verdant mickle of stringy stems adorned with small foliage , and recent summer add a frothing show of unremarkably bloodless bloom that looks a little like sister ’s breath ( Gypsophilaspp . and cvs . , Zones 3–9 ) but are so much better . Smallhead doll ’s daisy beckons for its own tending , while also acting as a consolidative constituent in the garden . Even when going to seed this plant does so discreetly , not turning its generative division brown at the tips like other aster relative often do . bad and drouth tolerant — it looked dead fine in the Oklahoma rock music quarry scree fields — and yet respond beautifully to polish in enrich soils , this overlooked aboriginal proves my old view from days of thumb throughHortus Third : we need to keep trying the “ other ” species beyond the single we already know and develop .
For more great native plant life for the Southeast , check out :
And for more southeasterly regional reports , click here .
— F. Todd Lasseigne , Ph.D. , do as executive director of Bellingrath Gardens and Home , a public garden and historical plate in Theodore , Alabama .
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Smallhead doll’s daisy is a tough-as-nails native that can achieve an impressive height without flopping.Photo: F. Todd Lasseigne
White doll’s daisy or false aster is more commonly cultivated than smallhead doll’s daisy but tends to flop over.Photo: David J. Stang,CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The delicate flowers of smallhead doll’s daisy resemble those of asters (Symphytrichumspp. and cvs., Zones 4–8) or baby’s breath.Photo: F. Todd Lasseigne
