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What Are Some Everblooming Flowers for Northern California?

What Are Some Everblooming Flowers for Northern California?

“I live in Northern CA– in the Bay Area. What are the flowers I can plant that will bloom year-round?” Question from Floredia of Vallejo, California

Answer: You live in USDA Hardiness Zone 9b. Thankfully, there are lots of everblooming garden plants that continue to look pretty year-round. Here are some suggestions for your zone and mild, arid climate.

Six Everblooming Flowering Plants for Northern California

Marguerite Daisy (Argyranthemum frutescens, Zones 9-11): New varieties of this daisy from the Canary Islands have been bred to bloom continuously. Vanilla Butterfly® is an especially pretty, high-performing type with ivory and butter-yellow blooms. Established plants tolerate heat and some drought. Bees and butterflies will visit the flowers.

Everblooming Roses (Rosa spp., Zones 5-10): Most new roses are continuous bloomers that tend to flower most vigorously in spring and then in bursts when weather is favorable throughout the year. (Click here for a great list of roses recommended for the West Coast.)

Lynn’s Legacy Texas Ranger (Leucophyllum langmaniae ‘Lynn’s Legacy’, Zones 8-10): Beautiful lavender-blue flowers cover this evergreen Mexican shrub through most of the year. Plant it in a well-drained spot. The Chihuahuan Desert native needs dry soil once established.

Mes Azur Sage (Salvia ‘Mes Azur’, Zones 6-9): Here is a tough evergreen everblooming salvia that bears loads of small purple flowers all year round. It will only slow down a bit during the hottest driest times of the year. It is a great plant for bees.

Red Neck Girl Forsythia Sage (Salvia madrensis ‘Red Neck Girl’, Zones 7-10): If you like big, bold plants, then this everblooming Mexican salvia is for you. It has huge spikes of yellow flowers on 4-6-foot plants. Hummingbirds love them.

Redvein Indian Mallow (Abutilon striatum, Zones 9-11): Pendulous flowers of yellow with striking red veins cover this shrub through the warm growing season. Specimens can become quite large (8-10′) but take well to rigorous pruning. It also grows well in pots.

There are hundreds more flowers for your area that bloom almost year-round, so let this list be the start of an ongoing search.

Happy gardening,

Jessie Keith

Black Gold Horticulturist

Five Great Daylilies for Continuous Bloom

Rainbow Rhythm® Tiger Swirl is an extra pretty, large-flowered everbloomer. (Image care of Proven Winners)

 

Daylilies (Hemerocallis spp.) are one of the most welcome flowers of summer, but most bloom for just four to five weeks, some blooming earlier and others later. This is why daylily hybridizers have worked to breed daylilies with longer bloom times. These days, there are more and more great rebloomers on the market for gardeners to plant and enjoy.

About Daylilies

A garden filled with daylilies flowering in late summer.

Daylilies belong to the genus Hemerocallis–a name derived from the Greek words hemera (day) and kallos (beauty).  The genus was originally named by Swedish botanist Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy and plant classification.  Linnaeus originally classified these plants as part of the lily family but more recently they have been moved into their own plant family, Hemerocallidaceae.

These flowers have a long history and are known to have been cultivated during the time of Confucius, (551-479 BC).  Originally these long-lived perennials were grown for food and medicine. The Asian natives reached Europe in the 1500s and, along with peonies and lilacs, were one of the earliest ornamental plants taken to the New World by colonists. The standard ditch lily (Hemerocallis fulva) was the common species grown. The wild nature of these orange-flowered daylilies made them less garden worthy by the standards of today, but nevertheless, they offered seasonal color in early gardens.  They were also easy to grow, required little care, and could grow in diverse environments.

 

About Reblooming Daylilies

The pale yellow reblooming daylily ‘Happy Returns’ is low growing, too. (Image by Ateragramm)

Before the 1970s, daylilies were less popular in ornamental gardens.  This was because of their relatively short bloom period, the straggled and unkempt look of their late-season foliage, and the bank of more garden-worthy flowering plants with continuous summer blooms. Then reblooming daylilies began to appear. The most popular of these was the 1975 introduction, ‘Stella de Oro’. It was the introduction of this daylily that inspired a widespread change in perceptions about daylilies.  ‘Stella de Oro’ has compact foliage, golden flowers. and probably the most important feature,  a long blooming season.  It became the new role model for daylilies and is still one of the most popular landscaping daylilies today.

With the attributes of ‘Stella de Oro’, a new interest in daylilies began and home gardeners suddenly began using them in their ornamental gardens. Plant breeders began to make crosses, and soon there were new colors of daylilies that were rebloomers. (I recently spoke with a daylily grower about rebloomers, and he commented that for summer-long bloomers he preferred the term continuous bloomers because they begin blooming in mid-June and continue through the summer and often into September.) Here are some of the best rebloomers beyond ‘Stella de Oro’.

Reblooming daylilies come in all colors from apricot to purple to palest yellow.

Hemerocallis ‘Apricot Sparkles’: Introduced in 2000, this compact, continuous bloomer has apricot-colored flowers that are large and showy.

Hemerocallis ‘Buttered Popcorn’: This award-winner is a reliable rebloomer that was bred in 1971. Despite its fine, fragrant, butter-yellow blooms on 32-inch stems, it did not win the quick popularity of the more compact ‘Stella de Oro’.

Hemerocallis Daring Deception‘: Grow this 1994 rebloomer for its wonderfully fragrant flowers of pale lavender pink with purple edges and a central eye. The plants reach 24-inches tall.

Hemerocallis Happy Ever Appster® Daylily Series: Bred by famed daylily breeder Dr. Darrel Apps, the daylilies in this series include many favorites, many of which are ‘Stella de Oro’ hybrids. The series includes popular varieties, such as the classic ‘Happy Returns’, a compact rebloomer from 1996 with cheerful primrose yellow flowers.

Hemerocallis Rainbow Rhythm® Daylily Series: There are so many beautiful, reliably reblooming daylilies in this group that its cultivars are sold by Proven Winners. Try the spectacular variety Rainbow Rhythm® Tiger Swirl, which has huge 7-inch flowers of gold with a red central eye.

‘Daring Deception’ is a fragrant daylily with flowers of pale lavender-pink and a black purple edge and eye.

This is just a small sampling of the many rebloomers available. After visiting several garden centers and looking at catalogs and online sources for daylilies, the selection of “continuous” bloomers is vast.  There is huge diversity in daylily flowers in lots of colors, many with dark edges and centers. Flowers not only come in single forms but semi-doubles and doubles as well as those with ruffled edges. Most have arching foliage, and plant height is variable with some growing only about 12-inches tall and others reaching 3-feet high or more.

Growing Daylilies

Daylilies are easily divided in spring or fall if their clumps become too large.

Luckily for gardeners, daylilies are exceptionally easy to grow.  They perform best in a soil that has been amended with compost. Black Gold Garden Compost Blend is ideal.  Give daylilies a location where they will receive sun for at least 5 hours a day. Plant the crown of a new plant slightly below the soil surface to protect the overwintering buds. Placing mulch around the base of your daylilies in the fall to further protect them during the winter. Daylilies are easily divided if their clumps become too large for an area.

As with many plants, keeping the old blooms picked off will encourage more flowers. If the foliage starts to look unkempt in late summer, gently pull off the browning leaves to refresh the plant’s overall look.

If you think of daylilies as short-season blooming plants, check out the many new continuous bloomers.  This is an excellent time to plant them, and plants from a local garden center will probably be in bud or bloom providing instant color.