New Plants!

It's been a couple of years since I've been able to do a "new plant" post since last year I made a point not to buy any plants. It probably goes without saying that a summer of no plant shopping is quite a bit less fun than a summer with!

I showed you the annuals I bought earlier, where I just needed to fill out several different beds and didn't have specific ideas of where things were going. This trip was different, in that I had some ideas about what plants and where.

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Of course I came home with completely different plants than I was thinking of, but at least I filled the spots that I intended on filling!

On the shadier side of the front walkway I chose a nice chocolatey coleus...

...and a rex begonia that I couldn't pass up:

Maybe deer don't eat either of these? (I should write an app: "DoDeerEat", because I end up typing that into my phone several times on every nursery trip!)


I know deer won't eat the "impulse buy" of this trip:

Yep, it's a castor bean. Now why exactly would I pay money for a castor bean plant when I will be pulling out castor been volunteers as weeds pretty soon in my garden?

Well, I don't have this cultivar, which I believe is 'Zanzibar' -- the one that stays mostly green but develops those HUGE leaves. Plus this spot doesn't get as much sun as it should, so a plant that has a good head start will give me the best results.

Those big leaves are just what this bed needed!


And next year I should have all of the castor bean seeds I'll want, as I'm now growing "New Zealand Purple', 'Carmencita', and 'Zanzibar'.

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