Verbena Plant Information
Verbena is a useful addition to flower gardens, bringing a vivid splash of color and flourishing in places where less sturdy plants languish. Verbena works well as a ground cover or as a contrasting background plant for taller flowers of different hues. Does this Spark an idea?
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A Tender Perennial
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Verbena is a perennial plant that produces abundant bunches of small, five-petaled flowers. It comes in several different varieties that grow to different heights, from low, creeping ground covers to upright, spiky versions that can reach 2 feet high or more. Colors include red, purple, blue, cream, white and peach. Verbena is a tender perennial that may not survive the winter in colder climates, so many gardeners treat it as an annual and plant new seeds or seedlings every spring.
Uses
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Sunset Magazine's Plant Finder says that ground-cover varieties of verbena are hardy and fast growing and make good candidates for planting along driveways and parking strips, as well as in crevices in dry walls. Ed Hume, whose television show "Gardening in America" is the longest-running such show in the United States, uses verbena regularly as a ground cover, as a border plant along the edges of flower beds and as a background plant for other, taller flowers.
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Orientation
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Verbena plants prefer to be in full sun, but Hume says that he has planted verbena in partial sun with good results in his Pacific Northwest garden.
Cultivation
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Verbena requires little soil amending, though adding some compost to the soil will give it better drainage. You should set seedlings out after all danger of frost has passed, about 2 to 3 feet apart. Hume suggests feeding them monthly with an all-purpose liquid plant food. Sunset advises that since the plants will mildew if they stay wet, they need good air circulation to keep them healthy. Verbena plants grow rapidly, and new flowers form on the tips of the new growth, so there's no need to remove the dead blossoms to encourage continuous flowering.
Companion Plants
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Hume recommends planting verbena alongside white, yellow or pink flowers. He particularly likes pairing Homestead Blue verbena, a medium-purple variety, with Shasta daisies. Yellow and orange marigolds also contrast nicely with verbena, as do pink zinnias and snapdragons.
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