In our opinion, Eriogonums – also known as Buckwheats – deserve a place in pretty much every sunny garden in the Rogue Valley! Eriogonums are one of those plants that check all of our boxes here at Shooting Star. Drought tolerant? Check. Good pollinator plant? Check. Native plant? Check. Really, really pretty? Check. We are frankly amazed that we haven’t featured it as a plant of the week before this!

In general, Eriogonums prefer full sun and well-drained soils. They’re a perfect plant for that hot spot in your yard that gets blasted by afternoon sun. Despite their toughness and resilience, they are covered with showy displays of delicately beautiful-looking flowers from mid-summer into early fall. They look great in a mixed planting combined with other sun-loving, drought-tolerant plants like Salvias, Agastache, Zauschneria, and Monardella, and Ceanothus.

They’re also one of the best pollinator plants around; providing larval food for butterflies and moths, and abundant nectar for a truly dazzling variety of pollinators: tiny native bees, bumblebees, honeybees, butterflies, and beetles. Seriously - one of my favorite things to do with Eriogonums in the garden is just sit next to one on a sunny day and watch who comes to visit!

We regularly carry the following varieties:

Eriogonum compositum (Arrowleaf buckwheat): To 2’ tall by 1’ wide. Soft grayish-green, arrow-shaped leaves. Flowers – which are borne in clusters up to 3” across - are white, tinged with a soft pink, and fading to a rusty red. E. compositum is somewhat more tolerant of heavy soils than E. umbellatum – although it would still prefer well drained soil. As an extra bonus, f you leave the seed heads on the plants in the fall, you will be extremely popular with seed-eating birds like goldfinches!

Eriogonum umbellatum (Sulphur-flower buckwheat): As the name suggests, these plants feature bright, sulphur-yellow flowers. Their leaves are a darker green than E. compositum, and more rounded. Plant size can be variable: they get between 6-12” tall by 1-3’ wide.

Kannah Creek: A cultivar of E. umbellatum, slightly more compact and consistent in size and shape. Kannah Creek gets about 12-15” tall by 15-24” wide. As an extra bonus, they provide outstanding fall color, with foliage turning a bright burgundy color as cold weather moves in.

Cane fruits all have similar cultural requirements. They do best in well-drained soil that is rich in organic matter, and prefer a minimum of 6 hours of sun a day (full sun is better). With the exception of Babycakes Blackberry and Raspberry Shortcake, most types of berries grow tall enough to need some sort of trellising system to keep the canes (and fruit) off the ground. All types will benefit from seasonal pruning to maximize productivity.

BLACKBERRIES

Natchez: One of the first producers of the season. A vigorous, semi-erect, thornless plant, with consistent yields of large, elongated, flavorful berries. Requires trellis support, especially when fruiting. Pinch out growing tips to control vigor. Ripens Early June. 4-5’ tall.

Triple Crown: A trifecta of flavor, productivity, and vigor, Triple Crown blackberry may outrun any competition as it gets better known. Plants are semi-erect and thornless and do well on trellises. Ripens mid-July to mid-August. Vigorous vines can grow 12-15’ in a season.

Chester: Thornless with semi-trailing habit and large, very sweet, flavorful fruit, even when firm. Begins to ripen just at Triple Crown finishes. Chester is the most winter-hardy thornless blackberry and is very resistant to cane blight. Provide support for the vines. Ripens mid-late summer. 5-10’ tall.

Black Satin: This thornless, heat-tolerant blackberry is a prolific producer of deliciously sweet and juicy, deep blue-black berries. Small, soft pink flowers appear on second-year semi-erect canes in spring, yielding a reliable crop of large blackberries in midsummer. 5-6' tall. Requires support.

Baby Cakes (pictured right): A dwarf, thornless blackberry with a compact habit that is perfect for small spaces and patio containers. In summer, large, classic, and sweet-tasting berries ripen in a series of colorful sprays of fruit, sometimes twice in one season! 3-4' tall x wide.

 RASPBERRY 

Fall Gold Raspberry: Very large golden berries of excellent flavor. The berries are too delicate to ship, so you’ll mostly only find them at local grower's markets. Wonderful for eating fresh, highly recommended as a fresh topping for vanilla ice cream! They are especially cold hardy and vigorous variety that is perhaps the tenderest and sweetest raspberry around. A primocane berry that ripens in fall. 4' tall x 3' wide.

Anne: An everbearing raspberry with the largest and best tasting berries of all the golden yellow raspberries. A moderate to high producer in this area, but bears very sweet, tropical tasting, quarter-sized fruit from summer into late fall - the same time as ‘Heritage’. Requires good drainage and benefits from a trellis. 4-5’ tall. 

Caroline: Late summer to fall fruiting. High-yielding plant that produces an abundance of large and delicious berries. Bears on new wood (primocane), and benefits from a bit of afternoon shade. Great in preserves, or for eating fresh off the plant! 3-4' tall and wide.

Heritage: An everbearing red raspberry that is considered the #1 fall variety nationwide. Large berries are firm and of excellent quality. It produces a smaller July crop with heavier production in Early September - the same time as the golden yellow ‘Anne’ raspberry. Good vigor and hardy canes that do not need staking or trellising. Rapidly growing to 5-8' tall.

Raspberry Shortcake (pictured left): A dwarf,thornless, bush-type berry perfect for the patio garden! Raspberry Shortcake gets about 2’-3’ tall and wide and bears abundant crops of delicious, full-sized fruit.

Royalty Purple Raspberry: An everbearing purple raspberry that is disease resistant and late ripening.  It doesn't spread by runners and does have thorny stems.  A cross of a purple raspberry and red raspberry that is very productive.

To learn more about the different varieties of fruiting trees and shrubs available here at Shooting Star Nursery, be sure to take a look at the Fruiting Trees and Plants list from our website!

If you’re looking for a compact, easy care evergreen shrub that provides year-round interest - and will thrive in a dry shade garden - consider Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’!

I like to think of Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’ as the gentler, more approachable relative of our beloved native Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium). Like Oregon Grape, ‘Soft Caress’ is a drought-tolerant evergreen shrub with fragrant sunny-yellow flowers. However, unlike Oregon Grape, its leaves and stems are thornless and soft rather than sharply poky and leathery.

‘Soft Caress’ is a great plant to use if you’re looking to bring a bit of texture into your dry shade garden. Its leaves look a bit like palm leaves – with slender, thread-like leaflets arrayed along a graceful central stem. For maximum effect, try planting it with some of the broader-leafed shade loving shrubs like Hosta, Hellebore, Osmanthus, and Viburnum davidii – or underplant it with dry shade-loving perennials like Epimedium and Heuchera.

From late fall to early spring, flowers appear in long ‘candles’ held above the foliage. These flowers not only help to brighten the winter garden, they’re also a great source of nectar for pollinators and other beneficial insects during the winter and spring, when few other plants are in bloom. The flowers are followed by decorative silvery-blue berries that add to the visual interest of the plant – and are popular with songbirds.

Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’ gets about 3’ by 3’ and maturity. It prefers part shade (morning sun is ok) to full shade and well-drained soils, and does well in containers as well as in the ground. This graceful, low maintenance shrub will be a welcome addition to your shady garden!

Fall is Aster season and here at Shooting Star Nursery we love these bright, cheery perennials!

As a group, Asters (which have now mostly been categorized as the genus Symphyotrichon, for all you plant nerds out there) are sturdy, long-lived, and unfussy about soil type - they even tolerate clay soils well.

Planting Asters is also a great way to extend the flowering season in your perennial garden. They generally come into bloom in mid to late summer – just as most perennials are finishing up their flowering season – and continue blooming right up until frost.

One of the things Asters are best known for, though, is their ability to attract butterflies and other pollinators. Their simple, daisy-like flowers provide a great platform for butterflies to land on while they nectar from the plants. In fact, if you’d really like to roll out the red carpet for butterflies, consider planting both Asters and Erigerons. Erigerons begin blooming in early spring and continue flowering into summer, at which point Asters come into bloom.

Most of the Asters we carry here at Shooting Star Nursery fall into two groups: dwarf Asters that about 12-18” tall (October Skies, Purple Dome, Wood’s Pink, Wood’s Purple) and standard Asters that get between 2-3’ tall (Avondale, Moench, Raydon’s Favorite). Snow Flurry is a prostrate Aster that only gets 4-6” tall, and our native Douglas Aster can range in height from 1-3’ tall.

Asters prefer average water, and will do well in full sun to part shade, depending upon variety. For a great show of fall color, consider planting them with a mix of goldenrods and ornamental grasses. We like to leave their dried flower stalks standing throughout the winter months (their seeds are really popular with wintering songbirds), and cut plants back in early spring as new growth begins to emerge.

Zauschneria - aka California Fuchsia - is one of the most drought tolerant, heat tolerant, pollinator-friendly, beautiful perennials you can grow. We're not sure why this western native is not used more: the hard to pronounce name, or that fact that you can kill it with kindness, perhaps? In any case, this lovely plant deserves a place of honor in more gardens here in the Rogue Valley! Ours begin blooming in early to mid-July and keeps going strong until we get a hard frost in late fall; putting on quite a show for us and the hummingbirds!

Zauschneria’s hot orange to deep red flowers are the quintessential “hummingbird flower”: long, nectar-rich floral tubes just perfectly shaped for a hummingbird’s slender bill. This is one of a handful of flowers I’ve seen actually hummingbirds bypass a feeder for! Plants bloom continuously and don’t seem to need any deadheading; the spent blossoms just neatly drop off the plant. In addition, the vivid orange-red flowers contrast beautifully with soft silvery gray foliage that fits perfectly into a drought tolerant garden. They look great when planted with Salvia, Agastache, Perovskia, Gaura, Eriophyllum, Monardella, and other drought-tolerant perennials.

This western native perennial is happiest in a well-drained soil (you see them naturally growing out of rock outcroppings), with full sun and infrequent water. They do especially well on slopes or at the edge of a rock wall. We like to leave up any dormant stems over the winter, to help them survive our wet winters and clean them up in early spring. The stems can be cut back after all danger of cold weather is past and the plant will grow back quickly to be full and vibrant by summertime.

When you see Zauschneria available in the nursery, grab them fast. We don’t carry them all year long and they sell out quickly! They are best planted in spring and summer, when they can have some time to get settled in before winter hits. Most varieties we carry are cold hardy to at least Zone 7b, about 5 to 10 degrees F.

Here’s a short description of a few of the varieties we carry:

Z. c. 'Calistoga'- 1' tall by 2' wide, one of the darkest orange (almost red) varieties with thicker, larger, more silvery leaves than most. Best planted on a slope.

Z. septentrionalis 'Select Mattole' - 10" tall and 24" wide or so. Very silvery, large leaves with a great spreading habit

Z. garrettii 'Orange Carpet' - 6" tall x 18" wide, a green leafed form that can take more afternoon shade and a bit more summer water. It is one of the first to bloom.

Z. ‘Everett’s Choice’ – 6” tall x 2-3’wide, with large vividly red flowers

Z. arizonica – 2-3’ tall, by 2’wide, with gray-green foliage and orange-red flowers¬. Hardy to Zone 5.