Packera aurea Bloom Combos I Hate
Packera aurea (a/k/a golden groundsel or golden ragwort) in my garden; azaleas at the National Arboretum
Ever been excited about a new plant until you saw what was blooming nearby at the same time and the color combo almost made you retch? Sounds extreme, but that was my reaction to seeing the golden blooms of Packera aurea among the (can we say garish?) blooms of azaleas.
So I moved the Packera to a spot with no competing blooms but in clear view from my porch, and LOVED them there. A perennial native to the Eastern half of the U.S., Packera likes shade just fine and is even evergreen – what a great groundcover!
So I loved it there until I got the bright idea to plant some Hellebores in that same high-visibility spot, where they made me VERY HAPPY in late winter and early spring….until the Packera started blooming and once again, retch!
So is gold one of those colors that just don’t play well with others? I could be overreacting, so I’m curious – anyone else have problems with some color combos in the garden?
A visit to the National Arboretum this week gave me a clue to my problem with the color gold. That’s where I found a vast swath of Packera paired with some blue and white blooms and the effect is stunning!
This is the new Claudia West design at the Arboretum’s Friendship Garden: “In 2019, landscape architect Claudia West led a complete plant community-based redesign of the front garden, which builds upon the foundations that Oehme and van Sweden laid nearly thirty years before.” The sculpture Demeter by John Cavanaugh is seen here.
Susan co-founded GardenRant and has written for national gardening magazines and independent garden centers, and worked as a garden coach.
For GardenRant her weekly posts cover what’s happening in the gardening world, and showcase comment-worthy gardens. Among her many raves are some rants, usually about gross generalizations and other ways that gardeners are misinformed.
Other places Susan can be found on the web are:
– The nonprofit community website Greenbelt Online about her adopted town of Greenbelt, Maryland (a “New Deal Utopia” founded in 1937), and the Greenbelt, Maryland YouTube Channel, both of which she founded and edits. She’s also on the Board of Greenbelt Access Television.
– For pure fun, her hoop-dancing YouTube channel curates online tutorials for beginners.
Susan was raised near Richmond, Virginia, went to Oberlin College in Ohio, and has lived in the Washington D.C. area ever since.
Contact Susan via email or by leaving a comment on one of her articles.