Earlier this week I visited Asheville, NC for a few days. Steve and I have made it one of our favorite vacation destinations since we were first married......way back in...'78! We've watched Asheville grow into the beautiful city it is today and complete with a Botanical Gardens and Arboretum. Both of which we visited on our way out of town Thursday. Here are some of my favorite plant settings. How great it was to see so many of the plants we sell here at GreenwoodNursery.com used in the arboretum garden and botanical garden landscapes.

Schizachyrium scoparium 'The Blues' are not only beautiful on this low berm, but they are soft, make an excellent backdrop for brighter flowering perennials and keep the soil from washing away. Colorful companion plants are Lychnis Lipstick or Maltese Cross and Pow Wow Wild Berry Coneflower.

Variegated Solomon's Seal brightens shaded to lightly shaded area nicely. Toss in a few interesting plants like the Regal Red Japanese Painted Fern and Sweet Woodruff which is a shade loving wonderfully fragrant perennial. The large rock and picket fence make nice backdrops.

The Russian Sage 'Little Spire' is a smaller version of regular Russian Sage and loves smaller growing companion plants like the coreopsis here, also consider shorter rudbeckias and Hello Yellow Butterfly Weed.  

While Swamp Milkweed normally grows in full sun, the NC Arboretum has it growing in a lightly shaded area. The white blooms are the only blooms in an area with lots of green variations.

In so many landscapes, I saw Joe Pye Weed plants in bloom. A favorite with butterflies, if you don't have the space for this variety, check out our Dwarf Little Joe Pye Weed.

 

I hope you enjoyed some of my favorite settings at the North Carolina Arboretum and Asheville Botanical Gardens. Click through their names if you'd like to read more about them. If you're in the Asheville or Western North Carolina area, they're definitely worth a walk through.