Gaura 'Pink Fountains'


Give a cheerful wave, please, to 'Pink Fountain' Gaura, one of my now-favorite late summer perennials. She will, I can promise you, wave back. Quite jauntily and coquettishly, I might add. I admit to being rather unhappy with her performance in years past....problems I now wisely attribute to operator error on my part...not recalcitrance on hers.


I had, as I so often do in my garden, tried to grow her in an environ that did not suit her sensibilities.




And what are those you may ask?


Well, don't be fooled by her delicate nature. This girl likes it rough. Lean soil with not too much water...in full sun with room to romp and sway and dance in the wind (which she doesn't mind a bit, thank you very much.) 


Her dainty little floral butterflies will be happy to perform for you, bobbing and flouncing in the breeze...as long as you are not TOO attentive with her care. A practice that comes quite easily to this garden caretaker.


So when I extended my front bedline on the west side last year (read about the change here, on the 
p o t a g e r  post 'MAKE BELIEVE') I added several clumps of 'Pink Fountain' in an area she has taken to quite nicely.


Her growth habit, wiry and tall and ethereal, works quite nicely with the many strong, rounded forms
of various evergreens in the same bed.

 


The tidy dark green backdrop grounds and enhances her spare, frail nature.



 She is thriving in the company of her bed mates: golden privet, compact butterfly bushes, drift roses...

through which she charmingly insinuates herself, without being a bother....

both having very romantic tendencies, you know.

I have a particular fondness for plants with a transparent growth habit...

and looking through thin, bare stems to a view beyond.


 Do drive by and see how lovely and undemanding she is.


    Voluptuous and airy simultaneously. A charming contradiction.


 She will not disappoint...happy to preen and flirt for and with you.


 A most delightful, pleasing perennial.


....for your viewing pleasure.




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