Here’s a great little annual to add into your home garden when the spring gardening itch hits you and you need a quick and easy solution to scratch the itch! (Work with me here—I’m excited to tell you about the wonders of verbena as fast as I can, ‘cause I think as soon as you finish reading, you’ll be on your way to the garden center!)
More than 200 species of herbaceous and woody plants exist within the genus Verbena, but the one you’ll be looking for is Verbena x hybrida. That’s the one most commonly available at your lawn and garden center and the one you want to purchase to add into your garden.
Ready-to-plant settings should be in abundance for your procurement as the spring weather warms and the garden centers get in plenty of plant material for your selection. If you’re ambitious and want to get a jump on the season, you can purchase verbena seeds and start your own plants indoors before it’s time to transplant them outdoors into your garden.
So, what’s the big deal about these little guys? Why am I excited about them and why do I think you’ll be eager to work with them?
Well, here we go! They’re undemanding—unless you think full sun, moderate watering, and a feeding or two are just too much for a plant to demand in order to produce colorful little blooms all summer long.
Even the foliage is attractive, with a deep green coloring and a velvety texture that’s soft to the touch.
Add verbena into your flower garden as a border planting or combine it with other types of flowering annuals to mix up the forms, colors, and varieties in your summer garden.
Colors range from white to pinks, reds, and purples. Choose your colors to mix in well with the contrasting and complementing colors of the other annuals in your flower garden.
Verbena also works well in pots, hanging baskets, or spaced around within the confines of your rock garden.
The plants grow in clumps that generally reach from 6 to 10 inches in height and often spread to 12 inches or more in width under ideal growing conditions.
If you have some nice verbena plants that you’ve enjoyed outdoors as potted plants throughout the summer, why not bring the pots indoors to provide growing enjoyment over the cold winter months?
Next spring, you can move them back to the outdoors. Or even use them as a source of cuttings to start new verbena plants.
See what an easy and rewarding plant the verbena is? Full sun, not too much water (never let the soil get soggy), and maybe a feeding or two as the summer progresses.
Plant ‘em—you’ll like ‘em!
