growing baptisia, with george coombs of mt. cuba center

Plus, various butterflies use the foliage as their host plant, and bumblebees find the flowers particularly delightful.

George Coombs of Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware is one gardener who has not overlooked baptisias, the so-called false indigos, at all.

In fact, he has planted and evaluated 46 selections with genetics from 11 different species as part of the trials conducted at Mt. Cuba from 2012 to 2015, and when the full-color report on those side-by-side assessments arrived recently in my mailbox from George (you can read the pdf version here online), I knew it was time to welcome him back to my public-radio program and podcast to talk about the best of these great plants.

Read along as you listen to the Aug. 22, 2016 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

Q. What are you trialing now out there, George? I’ve gotten the Baptisia report, but what’s in the ground now?

A. We’re actually about ready to take out our Baptisia trial, and are about ready to install a trial of Hydrangea arborescens. We’ve got about 30 different kind of smooth hydrangeas we’re going to test. And we’re just wrapping up our Monarda trials; we’re just in the last weeks of that.

That report