Darren Barshaw

Product Representative

What are the best landscape plants from Darwin Perennials? I have been asked this a lot lately from professional landscapers and garden retailers. They all want to know: What are our best perennial varieties for mass landscape plantings?

Here are my top picks and why. (Don’t forget! These are all First-Year Flowering perennials as well!)

English Lavender ‘SuperBlue’

‘SuperBlue’ is super hardy. It has a long bloom time and a free-flowering habit with less gapping, which means in the landscape it brings more color impact. It’s also a pollinator magnet – shows the bees lots of love! Here it is (above) the first week of September in Colorado Springs.

Nepeta Whispurr™ series Pink and Blue

This series has two robust colors that hold their form in the landscape. The large flowers are 8-10"/20-25cm long that are very showing in mass plantings. Nepeta is another class that is great for drawing in pollinators.

Nepeta Prelude™ series Blue and Purple

The Prelude series of catmint offers exceptional disease and pest resistance, helping them stay healthy through the season means lower maintenance. These plants also don’t lodge open or look “floppy” and have season-long flowering.

Perovskia ‘CrazyBlue’

The “crazy” part of ‘CrazyBlue’ comes into play with its unique, interlacing branches that put on a deep-blue color show when planted in mass. It keeps its upright form and does not lodge open in the landscape. Consider it a low-maintenance, pest-free work horse. Colorado State University listed 'CrazyBlue' as one of its 2021 "Top Performer" Perennials. This means it was evaluated against unique Rocky Mountain environmental conditions for plant vigor, uniformity, floriferousness and tolerance to environmental and biot­ic stresses.

Salvia ‘Blue by You’

Here's another CSU "Top Performer" Perennial from 2020! This is the earliest Salvia nemorosa to bloom in the landscape. ‘Blue by You’ has great heat tolerance and is super hardy (USDA zone 4b-9a). It’s free flowering and will re-flush without deadheading. It’s also sterile, so it will not reseed into landscape designs. With its superior habit, earliness to flower, and how it keeps flowering, why continue growing the over used and underperforming older genetics? 

So if you’re a greenhouse or nursery supplying your local pro-landscape companies, take note of these recommendations. Use our First Year Flowering Tool to help schedule key in-flower dates to meet your customers’ needs, and be sure to re-watch our Darwin Perennials University video playlists for production and finishing tips.