If you said Heuchera, you’re right. Perhaps you’re going to reshuffle some shady beds this spring, and know that Heuchera, with their great foliage, can help make garden pictures work–but wonder which ones, and how best to use them. I invited George Coombs, trial garden manager at the must-visit Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, with 50 acres of native-plant display gardens and 500 acres of natural land, back to the radio show to help make the best choices and grow them to perfection.
George knows from Heuchera, having trialed 83 varieties side by side (the exhaustive results are in this pdf). “I say to people, ‘I’m doing Consumer Reports for plants,'” he explains. Though there are countless varieties on the market, many are duplicative in appearance or just not distinctive. “I can honestly say that when it came time to end the trial, there were very few Heuchera that I wanted to take home for my own garden,” George says. But stars there were.
For dramatic groundcover. For growing in pots in shady places. For unifying shade-garden designs. Read along as you listen to the April 6, 2015 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).
read/listen:my heuchera q&a with george coombsQ. Let’s get some background on Heuchera—such as when they first came to gardens and how they became so Read more on awaytogarden.com