STAR ROSES & PLANTS
in the garden Coral Knock Out® Rose
radiant roses January is the month to get beds ready for roses, and new Knock Out Roses introduced this year can add vibrant colors to your garden in mass plantings or containers. BY BETTY MORRELL
T
he old year has departed, leaving us with a fresh start and a garden full of new hopes, good health, happiness, and peace. Come take a walk with me down an aisle at the trade show. I am so excited to see some really interesting colors on my right. I t has been ten years since a ne w Knock O ut Rose has been intr oduced. The standards for a Knock Out Rose are so high that it’s rare that a potential intr oduction is even considered. With these thr ee stunning new additions, I’m sure you’ll find a place in y our landscape for one or more. The White Knock O ut Rose is a single rose. It is an excellent shrub rose, which stands out in the landscape due to the contrast betw een its pur e white blooms and v ery dark green foliage. I t will bloom from spring through fall and it maintains a compact habit of thr eeand-a-half feet wide by the same height. The golden yellow centers in these white roses really pop! Clustered next to the White Knock Out is a dazzling new color addition, the Coral Knock Out. Its unique coral color
TIP OF T HE M O N T H January is the time to get the beds ready for roses. Cut bushes to knee-high because as soon as it warms up, new foliage will emerge. Fertilize throughout the growing season.
is even stronger in hot humid climates. The flower opens up with brick orange color and finishes a light coral salmon. The young foliage is bronze red, blooms spring through fall, and maintains an upright-to-mounded habit. This bush grows to four-and-a-half feet tall b y the same width, with beautiful double flower heads. Another new Knock O ut, Peachy, is peach in color , achieved with the combination of pink petals with y ellow centers. The color is much more intense with the cooler temperatur es in the spring and fall. This compact bush grows 3 feet in height and 3 to 4 feet in width. All the Knock Outs love full sun. Make sure you scout out these beauties and add them to y our garden. They’re
53 AMELIA ISLANDER MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2018
great in mass plantings, specimens, or in a large pot with some cascading greenery around the bottom. Let’s amble through this garden to the next aisle at the trade sho w, where something red is catching my ey e. It is a Mimulus, meaning “comic actor,” the Burst Berry Monkey flower shrub, a small, well-branched mounding shr ub that grows 18 to 24 inches tall and wide. The foliage is a dar k glossy gr een with numerous large, dark red funnel-shaped flowers that have two lips. The bottom lip is split once and the top lip split twice, resulting in five frilly petal lobes that have a light orange/ yellow throat. These flowers bloom year round in coastal gar dens and gr ow in full sun to light shade. What a nice little border plant! By the way, there are two more of these wonder ful new shrubs; Burst Lemon and Burst Orange, which I will tell you about later. Three aisles o ver, I see something outstanding. We’ll go ther e next time! If you have questions, email me at bamorrell@aol.com. Until then, Happy Gardening!
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