Deer Resistant Plants - B and C

Corydalis lutea is a shade loving plant (though it will take quite a bit of sun) what grows about a foot tall and in mild winters is evergreen. It self seeds gently and you will find small bits of it throughout the garden in time. I have it in lots of places, including 2 clumps that seeded about 12 feet up in a large, mostly dead maple tree.

Lily of the Valley has always been a good deer-resistant plant. This one has yellow/gold stripes. We also have one with a gold edge. I love the scent of the flowers when it blooms in May. Light shade, but needs some sun for the variegation.

This is an odd one, and hard to find. It is a variegated horseradish. Double duty here since you can dig it and eat it just like the plain old green version. It likes a bit of shade, and in fact, ours grows in quite dense shade under a bush. Some years the variegation is better than others, but it is always nice.

Not everyone likes plants with dark leaves, but for a little something different, this might work in your garden. It is a Cimicifuga called 'Brunette'. It makes a mound of ferny foliage about 18 inches tall and then in mid to late summer throws up a flower scape which is probably at least 3 feet tall with plumy, astilbe-like blooms. Another shade plant.

We knew nothing about this one when we bought it except that we loved the silver foliage. We didn't even know if it would survive the winter. Not only did it survive, but it was in full leaf the whole time. Now, in late spring, it is covered with white flowers. We grow it in full sun at the edge of a lotus pond (though since it's a lined pond, the soil where it grows it pretty dry, especially in summer. I'm going to divide this one so I can have it in a couple of other places.

Cassia hebecarpa is probably something most people don't know. It loves sun, though it will grow in light shade - just not flower as much. It is tall, about 4 feet and gets the lovely yellow blooms in late summer. It does self seed, so you have to weed out the seedlings if you don't want all of them. Good for the back of the border.

Brunnera - I'd grow this one just for the flowers, even though they only last a few weeks in late spring. The color is just so gorgeous. This one is called 'Langtrees'. There is a green and white variegated on and a number of new varieties with different silver/white/green variegations. I've found that some of these newer ones will revert to something else in time (maybe a really short time), but Langtrees is quite stable and even comes true from seed, at least mostly.

Blue Eyed Mary is a wild flower around here, but I have a huge area of it in my garden. It has a snapdragon like flower and self seeds. It will germinate in late fall and the tiny plantlets will just sit there all winter, but as soon as spring arrives, they will quickly grow and bloom. I think we get almost a month of bloom here and then as quickly as they came, they just sort of collapse and disappear, luckily to reappear the next year. One of our patches is along the driveway as you walk into the gardens and it always catches people's attention.

Last but not least, it Baptisia. There are versions with other colors of flowers, but I seem to be doing a lot of blue flowers this morning, so I've put the blue version up. It is a tall plant, 3 feet of more and likes sun. It makes big seed pods, but I've never had it self seed here. Probably just as well, since no matter how lovely it is, a whole garden of these would be a bit much.

More plants tomorrow. We had rain all day yesterday and it is raining again now. Weeds are probably growing like crazy, but they'll just have to grow some more until it dries up a bit.

Jane