Spirea ‘Neon Flash’ is a Bright! Magenta! Pink! flowering shrub to about 4’ tall, which loves full sun and blooms throughout the summer. It does lose its leaves in winter and gets a bit of reddish-yellow fall color, but the fall color isn’t anything to rave about.

I love the fine texture of the leaves, the neat, compact habit, and the Bright! Pink! flowers. This is an easy Spirea to care for so long as it has reasonably good drainage, an application of organic fertilizer in spring and regular water. It can sometimes get a bit of powdery mildew around the blooms if it is unhappy, but overall it is a sturdy, easy-care plant that gives a lot more back than it asks from us.

I make sure to deadhead it promptly to encourage rebloom, and sometimes I’ll get three blooms in one season from it – a good six months of color. If you’re keeping up with things often, just prune out the individual flowerheads as they go brown and leave the new buds to bloom. If you’re a more casual gardener, just wait until the whole thing is done blooming and brown, then cut the entire flowering stem down into the rest of the foliage so you don’t notice the cut stems. It will rebloom for you soon!

Deer-resistant but not 100% deer-proof, I love this Spirea with Hebes, Salvia leucantha/ Mexican Bush Sage, ornamental grasses, and that wild tropical-looking Alstroemeria ‘Third Harmonic’ shown in the photo.

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This white Parahebe is one of those plants that deserves to be much better known than it is. The deep green, glossy foliage is evergreen and very attractive, the delicate white blooms are lacy yet sturdy and incredibly profuse – and the plant simply goes with everything. You name me a plant that doesn’t look nice next to this Parahebe and I’ll name you a plant that I don’t want in my garden.

They bloom so constantly that it’s hard to find a good time to prune the darn things. At some point in late summer there are so many dead blooms mingled among the pretty fresh ones that I just take the hedging shears to it and bring it in by about 8” to take off all the old bloom spikes and “pinch” the leaf tips to keep it bushy and full. Parahebe linifolia gets to about 3.5’ tall and around here in coastal zone 9, larger with time.

They respond moderately well to hard pruning (pruning back to wood), returning with vigor 80% of the time, but I only do that if absolutely necessary to control size on an old specimen. You can usually shear it in stages to reduce size and have it look decent during the process (shearing in stages is where you shear back to where there’s only 3” of green growth left before you hit woody stems, let the plant fill in and create new growth on the inside of the plant, then prune again to bring it back in size even more. The whole point with this technique is that it has a chance to recover and make new green growth to sustain it through each prune).

They are not deer-resistant, not wind-tolerant, and need full sun to look good. But put it in a decent garden location and it will really shine for you, while asking for little in return.

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This Hebe is a lovely little evergreen thing which gets to about 3’ around and blooms off and on a good part of the year. It takes shearing well and usually comes back well from hard pruning during the growing season, though I try to avoid pruning into the wood if I can avoid it.

It is not deer-resistant, but it will take strong winds and commercial landscape conditions well with little care. I think it’s such a cutie – I love it with ornamental grasses, Spireas,  Phormiums/ Flaxes, Heucheras, and Dietes/ Fortnight Lily. Full sun, as with all Hebes.

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