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Gardener News
TAKE ONE
Serving the Agricultural, Gardening and Landscaping Communities
February, 2015
GARDENERNEWS.COM
No. 142
2015: Year of the Coleus
Tom Castronovo/Photo
With the continued emphasis on the importance of foliage in our gardens, the wide and exciting range of coleus varieties available to the gardening public should augment the planting palette nicely. Chosen as the annual for the National Garden Bureau’s 2015 program, coleus is a durable plant with very significant gardening potential for a wide range of gardeners and their garden situations. Coleus has a long history of use in our gardens as a foliage plant and has gone through various phases of popularity over the past couple of centuries. The relative ease of establishment after planting combined with a wide range of selections has made coleus indispensable in the garden and popular in the container as well. History Coleus is thought to originate in Southeast Asia. While there is some debate as to when it arrived in Europe, Dutch botanist, Karl Ludwig Blume, is credited with naming and introducing the plant in mid-19th Century England. This member of the mint family, with the traditional square stems and opposite leaves, comes in a wide range of foliage coloration, leaf texture and plant form. Considered an (Continued on Page 9)