| Welcome to the coastal south! Gardening here is definitely different but very rewarding. Hope you have a quick learning curve and lots of fun! As said above, you can have reliable winter color with camellias, snapdragons, and pansies. But a lot of annuals and perennials don't stop until early December or later and you may also have some roses blooming on Christmas Day or later. My verbena tenuisecta never stopped blooming last winter. Then things start hopping again in late February so there isn't really much of a winter anyway. As a group, salvias seem to be great for the southeast coast. I have indigo spires, mexican bush sage, anthony parker, purple majesty, forsythia, rosebud, limelight, argentine skies, waverly, pineapple, van houttei, victoria, and black and blue. The van houttei is the only one that is tender and they all thrive. Most get fairly big (okay, maybe VERY big) but are worthy of the garden space. Indigo Spires blooms FOREVER starting in spring and going right on through fall. Purple majesty has great color but is a bit leggy and floppy for my taste but it blooms early too. For the most part though salvias bloom more towards the end of summer. Another broad group that does great is the malva/ hibiscus family. Someday I'll have to look them up and see what the family tree looks like but in general I've found that lots of them do well here either as annuals or perennials. There are a lot of hardy hibiscus that do well here such as Lady Baltimore, Lord Baltimore, Disco Belle, and on and on and on! But then some tropical hibiscus will overwinter in the ground here too. Or, more accurately, most tropical hibiscus will overwinter MOST winters in the ground in the right microclimate. And a random freeze may do them in though. Malva sylvestris is a great spring bloomer here with great big fat sassy leaves that add a real punch in the foliage department. Texas Star Hibiscus needs a lots of water and a little shade but has great red flowers and foliage that may get you arrested it looks so much like a pot leaf! Rose of Sharon is a traditional southern shrub that will do well and is a hibiscus relative. Other family members that do well are turk's cap, scarlet mallow, abelmoschus manihot, abelmoschus moschatus, hibiscus radiatus, and most lavateras. Pardon any misspellings and sorry for all the botanical names but I don't even know common names for all of them. Like FoxesEarth above, I'm wild about gerbera daisies and for good reason. If you make them happy to start with, they really thrive in the heat and bloom from very, very early on until frost without pausing for breath. I highly recommend them, especially if you like to have flowers to cut. Other random ideas: larkspur are easy to grow annuals from seed and look really impressive around late April and early May. Columbines will bloom from seed sown in the ground the previous fall and most plants will survive the summer and come back stronger the next year. Purple hyacinth bean grows easily from seed and is a real traffic stopper when in bloom. Herbs that do well in sandy, well-drained situations are Spanish Lavender, Fernleaf (or maybe it is laceleaf, I never can remember!)Lavender, and Rosemary. The rosemary will get huge and smells heavenly! I didn't mean to get so long-winded and promise that I'm really a novice and not a "know-it-all"! But sound gardening guidance for our quirky little coastal zone seems so hard to come by that I'm more than happy to pass on any little tidbit to anyone struggling to figure it out. And am happy to receive little nuggets of wisdom myself! Happy gardening. And don't forget to amend your soil! |
