Much of the charm of the Conservatory’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden display comes from a glorious assortment of upright annuals. These make tall, statuesque, and often bold additions to any seasonal border. But while we often associate height in both perennial and annual borders with spires that guide your eyes upward—and there are certainly plenty of spires in this Groundbreakers display—what delighted me was the variety of other forms that gave height to the border.
One striking example was the monster-sized umbels of false Queen Anne’s lace, Ammi visnaga ‘Green Mist’. This opulent annual sports large Queen Anne’s lace flowers above ferny foliage. It grows to four feet tall and will create an impressive show whether placed in the middle or back of an annual border. It attracts beneficial insects into your garden and also makes a spectacular cut flower.
Evaluation is an important process in the garden. It teaches us to understand what grows well in specific sites and what struggles or fails; what combines well and what doesn’t; and it affirms our likes and dislikes between different species and varieties. That said, I always like to take a few minutes to reflect on the season’s best performers so I can add them to the expanding repertoire of stellar annuals for every gardening occasion.
One of my favorite annuals in the garden this year was the flowering tobacco Nicotiana mutabilis. This tender perennial (hardy in zone 8) flowers from June until first frost without slowing down or missing a beat, creating a colorful haze in the garden with dainty trumpet-shaped flowers that smother its wiry, 5-foot-long stems.
The specific epithet mutabilis means “changeable,” and it’s more than appropriate. The flowers on this flowering tobacco open white, morph into a pale pink, and finish dark pink, giving the impression that there are three different flower colors on the plant. The foliage has a tropical feel to it, adding to this gardening belle’s natural mystique. But can it possibly get any better? Of course! Nicotiana mutabilis is deer resistant, attracts hummingbirds, and is easy to seed around the garden.
