In landscapes, colors pop in with summer rains

Tag: White Mushrooms

Iadmit that I can't arrange a sofa and chair in a living room, let alone select colors that match. So who would have thought that a word I heard on HGTV to describe an eye-grabbing interior design also applies to my world of nature and landscapes? The word is "pop!"

Just as certain colors make a room pop or stand out, summer rains make the same thing happen in nature and landscapes. Plump with fresh water, all sorts of color appears out of nowhere.

Tickseed

Have you seen small dainty yellow flowers along the edges of ditch banks, woodlands and swales, or the middle of damp highway medians? This is a type of tickseed, one of several Coreopsis species that blooms in the spring, summer and fall months.

Growing 1 to 3 feet tall, it's a perennial, which means a plant dies down to the ground in the winter, and then bounces back in warm weather. It also spreads by self-sown seeds.

Use tickseed plants in a sunny area where you want to naturalize a small section of your landscape and add some bright seasonal color. They're carefree - fertilizers and irrigation are not needed if they're planted in the right type of soil. All you have to do is cut back the stems in late winter after the flowers are spent and seeds are fully ripe.

Rain lily

This flower is another summer delight that, amazingly, pops from nowhere. There are many types of rain lilies, also called zephyr lilies (Zephyranthes species). They are small bulbs in the Amaryllis Family. A few are Florida natives, but most are from tropical America and all with grassy leaves. Flower color varies from pink to white and yellow.