When it comes to good value and low maintenance with a summer blooming perennial, the top choice has to be Bidens. On the coast, you can get up to eight months of bloom time. And plants rarely need deadheading.
Pollinators cannot resist Bidens, especially those charming little skipper butterflies. Bees, bee flies, hover flies and all those nameless buzzy little critters that are responsible for keeping our gardens crave the flowers. A member of the aster family, Bidens blooms in hues of bright yellow, white, red/orange bicolor and flaming orange/red.
Although this delightful pollinator plant produces numerous small flowers, no bigger than the size of a quarter, it is fairly easy to maintain. It blooms profusely. Plants put on new flowers and foliage rapidly, so spent flowers are often lost in the new growth. They need very little care save for a good deep watering occasionally to keep it fresh.
In the garden, Bidens is perfect as a low border plant or short-lived ground cover. Plants average 3-feet wide and less than 12 inches tall. Planting in full sun will encourage plenty of flowers and a nice tight mass of foliage. Established plants are fairly drought tolerant, but look best with occasional deep watering. Bidens are especially well-suited to containers. Pot up a 4-inch plant in a two-gallon container and you will have a display brimming with flowers in no time.
At the nursery you may find a few different kinds of Bidens, typically in 4-inch pots. At first they might look a bit scraggly, but once in the ground they really take off. Bidens Beedance ‘Painted Red’ has fiery orange and yellow bicolor flowers. “Tweety’ produces bright yellow flowers. B. Ferulifolia “Pretty in Pink’ pinkish/lavender flowers. ‘Campfire’ is a flaming reddish orange variety.
Terry Kramer is the retired site manager for the Humboldt Botanical Garden and a trained horticulturist and journalist. She has been writing a garden column for the Times-Standard since 1982. She currently runs a gardening consulting business. Contact her at 707-834-2661 or terrykramer90@gmail.com.