All right, so let's talk about best plants  for Tennessee.
  What did I plant for sure?
  It's common but an adorable plant, I'm just  gonna start with spring, that seems logical,
  is our little moss phlox, I love the little  Phlox subulatas, they just do great ground
  covers, they also serve as a winter interest  because they're evergreen.
  They're highly durable, you can get a range  of colors of different kinds of pinks and
  blues and purples, even whites, if you decide  that some of the pinks might clash with your
  coral azaleas.
  Also I gotta have that, I've gotten a little  crazy over columbines, which to me, were not
  a huge favorite to begin with, they look delicate,  but they're really not.
  They're tough and durable and they reseed  generously and I love that fact.
  I really fell in love with one at work called  woodside variegated, and it came to us as
  a golden green variegation with cobalt blue  flowers.
  And as it reseeds into our mulch, it comes  back both gold, green, and variegated, it's
  become now where it's mostly gold but it still  has the cobalt blue flowers.
  So I took some of the seeds home and shook  'em around my little woodland area, and this
  was the first year that they really bloomed  prolifically, and I'm spreadin' 'em around
  to other parts of the garden.
  And our native columbine, which I adore.
  Because the hummingbirds love it as well,  and they are very, very tough plants.
  So that spring ephemeral kind of disappears  as it gets hot, so you're gonna have to go,
  well then I like to go into successional gardening,  later phlox would be woodland phlox, which
  can be used in sun or shade, and will give  you a good bloom season to take you on into
  the hotter days of summer.
  Course there's tons of selections for summer.
  I'm a big fan of the coneflowers and I love  some of the newer ones that have come out.
  The PowWow Wildberries have been very good.
  I know, PowWow, kinda stretch your mouth when  you say it.
  It's a hard one to forget.
  They've been really good because some of the  new colors, even though they're exciting,
  have not been very durable perennials for  us.
  That's a very friendly one for wildlife and  those of us who care about the pollinators,
  of course, are gonna add those.
  And everybody knows about the Rudbeckia foliage,  you know, the black-eyed susan, there's a
  bunch of other good Rudbeckias, the hirtas  are often just annuals, they'll reseed generously,
  but why wouldn't one go get a pack of seeds  of Rudbeckia hirtas, also called gloriosa
  daisy.
  The trilobas, there's a bunch of other Rudbeckias  that I think are valuable additions.
  I have a big place, not necessarily my house,  got a modest little home, but a big landscape
  and a lot of acreage, whereas a lot of people  like little plants, I like big, bold plants,
  I want big impact, lotta bang for the buck.
  So having been a fan of the tropical look  all my life, I'm going for the Cannas and
  the elephant ears that have proven to be more  perennial for me.
  So I have to have Bengal Tiger, that's my  favorite Canna, with that gorgeous golden
  striped foliage, 'cause even when it's not  in bloom it's so beautiful.
  And Tropicanna as well has a beautiful foliage.
  Both have orange blooms, Tropicanna tends  to get a little faded lookin' later in the
  summer.
  And I like to mingle those with the elephant  ears.
  And the elephant ear that I have found to  be very durable, almost aggressive, is one
  called Illustris.
  And Illustris has the black leaf, and most  of the black leaf forms are not perennial,
  but Illustris has a black leaf with a strong  green vein.
  It's not gonna get quite as big and lush as  some of them, but it spreads nicely for me
  and so I can move it around and put it in  different parts of the garden.
  And just one more, it's not a perennial, but  I always grow it every year from seed, would
  be the castorbean plant, a lot of people are  worried about that, 'cause it does have a
  poisonous bean.
  So be aware of that if you've got kids or  critters that might eat the poisonous beans,
  but the big, red form, Carmen or--
  - Is it stay red all summer?
  - [Carol] Yes.
  - The fruit's kinda interesting with the kinda  spiky, and you probably wouldn't have moles
  around it, I guess.
  - That was the old theory, my grandaddy grew  'em and called 'em mole-killer bushes.
  - You think it plays out?
  - I don't think so, in fact, I don't even  think the beans are quite as poisonous as
  rumored to be, from research.
  You really have to eat a good number of them  to be killed.
  Used to be you thought if you ate one you  were--
  - Right.
  - The Ricillinic acid, I think's the toxin.
  - Right, right.
  But anyway, just want to throw that out there  for people to be cautious, but gosh, again,
  so much bang for the buck from a few seeds.
  Getting into fall, I'm really getting into  the asters, asters and the goldenrods that
  aren't terribly invasive.
  Again, that extends the plants for the pollinators,  a lot of those butterflies that are migrating
  north through that time, excuse me, they're  migrating south in the fall, and people think
  of monarchs, but the sulfurs also migrate,  a lot of the salvias that are late blooming,
  goodness, how did I leave out salvia for summer?
  I'm a huge salviaphile, love them.
  And a lot of them show off well in the fall,  like Mexican Bush Sage.
  And I love the combination of the old Mexican  Bush Sage with the old Autumn Joy Sedum.
  I know that's kind of an old plant and there's  newer colors and exciting foliage, but the
  Autumn Joy, I love that color, they're very  sturdy, and I leave them up through the winter,
  which we're getting into for winter interest,  with a little cap of snow on them they look
  really good.
  So evergreen perennials for winter interest  would include the Sweet Flag, it's kind of
  a grassy.
  I love any of the sedges, evergold, everillo,  is particularly spectacular, a solid gold
  sedge.
  And the Hellebores which have become commonplace  and easy to find now, are both evergreen and
  winter bloomers.
  So that wraps us back around towards spring,  and who doesn't love a few daffodils?
  I don't like to overdo them because you gotta  look at that foliage for so long, so I do
  mingle them with the other plants as well  so I can hide the ugly foliage.
  - You can put 'em in the back of the bed or  back of the yard.
  - That's right.
  And they do well in the woodland setting,  which finally, I do have a shade garden established.
  Which leads me back to one that's not as common,  and that is, I forgot to mention, the Japanese
  anemone, which is a really easy to grow shade  lover that looks very delicate, it looks like
  a beautiful pink or white poppy in the woodland  landscape.
  I'm going back again, I meant to mention,  and I know you love natives, the Spigelia,
  the Spigelia marilandica, sometimes called  Indian pink, I don't like that name 'cause
  there's a lot of other plants called Indian  pink, and Spigelia's fun and pretty to say.
  Used to be hard to find, you can find Spigelia  pretty readily now in the landscape.
     
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