Ageratum, the Easiest of Annuals
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- November
- 28
Looking for a really easy true blue annual for your garden? Ageratum, which is also deer resistant, may be just the plant. And unlike tender annuals like basil, cosmos and coleus, ageratum will tolerate a few light frosts before dying back for the winter.
Here’s a patch of ageratum in the butterfly garden at the Lenoir Preserve in Yonkers.
It’s a plant I find absolutely irresistible in the nursery every May. Ageratums also come in mauves, purples, pinks and whites, but it’s the blue shades that pull me in every time.
Known botanically as Ageratum houstonianum, these hardworking annuals work well in containers, as edging plants or in the front of a richly planted border. Common names include floss flower, pussy foot and blue fleece flower.
Depending on the cultivar, heights range from 6 inches to 3 feet. The taller varieties, which offer a more graceful and open growing pattern, have grown in popularity in recent years.
Ageratums like fertile, well-drained soil and full sun, but they’ll adapt to partial shade. Unless they’re in a container, I’ve never bothered to water mine. And they seem to thrive in really hot weather.
Like other blue flowers in the garden, ageratum looks good with everything and it makes every other plant around it a little brighter and bolder. I love it with cosmos of any color and orangish-red tithonia (Mexican sunflower).
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 10:09 am by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
Bill,
There is an eastern native perennial called Mistflower
(Eupatorium coelestinum) that looks very much like ageratum – it grows to about 2’ and is great for cutting. It likes a moist shady place, but does well in my mostly sunny garden. It is said to spread rapidly if it likes its spot, which would also make it a good groundcover if that’s what you want.