Next to colorful annuals, tropical plants are a hot summer garden's best friend. In Oklahoma and much of the middle South, tropical plants are grown successfully as annuals. Yes, in a mid-south climate, they die at winter's end, but that's okay. If you take cuttings, you can keep your favorites going year after year. Many of my best plant combos and those in other gardens I've seen involve tropicals in some fashion. A tropical, native plant paradise of variegated tapioca, Salvia greggii 'Pink Preference' and Melinis nerviglumis 'Pink Crystals' or 'Savannah' depending upon where it's purchased. What price are you willing to play for beauty all summer even when the weather is scorching hot? My garden would be very boring without annuals and tropicals, and you know how much I hate a boring landscape. In 2011, the only border that looked good that dreadful summer was the one by the garage planted with...

If perennials are the little black dresses of the garden world, then annuals are gardening's flashy accessories. They bring color to our lives. They brighten up shady spots. They bloom their entire seasons, cool or warm, with very little help from us. Please don't leave annuals out of your planting design. They are full of color your eyes can't get enough of. Weedy-looking, but excellent orange cosmos growing in partial shade. When I garden coach, clients always say they want an "easy" garden, and the next word out of their mouths is "perennials." I'm not anti-perennial, but they are a lot of work if you want to keep them blooming and tidy. My garden is full of long-blooming perennials like daylilies, shasta daisies, mums and asters, but I can't be without annuals either. I also wouldn't be without plants grown in my part of the country as annuals even if they are perennial somewhere...

From several conversations I've had with gardeners lately, I know you're worried about my roses. I'm worried too, but I am trying to take a proactive approach toward Rose Rosette Disease without letting it upset me too much. I've cried and stamped my feet enough. I'm calling the spots where I've removed roses "garden holes of opportunity." Here is a more recent post on Rose Rosette Disease. I have way too much experience with it. English rose 'Darcey Bussell' isn't showing any signs of Rose Rosette so far. Gardening isn't only an exercise of the mind. It is not virtual and exists in the real world of life, death and rebirth. When a gardener turns over that first spade of soil, or lays down those newspapers and mulch to smother the grass, a garden is born. It grows to maturity, and then parts of it change for better or for worse....

Good morning or afternoon depending upon when I get this October edition of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day posted. Thank you to Carol from May Dreams Gardens who makes this fun possible. A few days ago, I profiled plants for pollinators, and I'll try not to rehash those blooms, but I don't know how many more I have. The garden is becoming more sparse as winter encroaches, but some plants I would normally post in October--like the mums--are not yet blooming. What gives? Tricyrtis hirta, toad lilies, growing in partial shade. Toad lilies have bloomed for nearly a month. They are not native, but they look so good next to the native Drummond's aster and common mountain mint that I will keep them here. Unlike other plants, they also seem to have the ability to duke it out in their corner of this shady bed full of colonizing perennials. The roses are back and...