Verbena: One Flower, Many Stories

I have a little stand of Verbena bonariensis ‘Vanity’ growing in the flower bed I made around my mailbox last fall.

There are a lot of directions I could take this story.

For starters, I could talk about how this particular variety of Verbena is an All-American Selections ornamental winner from 2022. It also won a prize in Europe!

I could make this a story about winter sowing. All-American Selections sent me the seeds to try and I wasn’t quite sure how best to sow them so I decided to try winter sowing, which is something I had never done before. It worked quite well. I ended up with a nice bunch of verbena seedlings.

I could take this in the direction of planting for pollinators. I noticed a butterfly on the verbena as I mowed by it earlier today. I assume bees and butterflies will also find those zinnias, which I also grew from seeds. The variety is Zahara and I bought just the yellow ones from True Leaf market. I knew I didn’t need that many plants so I purchased a packet of 10 seeds, and by golly there were 10 seeds in that packet and all of them germinated.

I could make this a story of “plans made, plans kept.” I had always planned to someday plant flowers around my mailbox and after 25 years of living here, I finally did it. “Plans made, plans kept!”

Other story options? How about wondering if this particular variety of verbena self-sows like other V. bonariensis are known to do? I have no idea. It’s not like these are in a perennial border where the seeds can land on some bare ground and germinate next spring. And later this fall, I intend to rip out these flowers and plant tulips bulbs in their place. And then I’ll rip out the tulips and plant annual flowers there in the spring, though probably different ones than these.

Or do you want to hear how I keep those nice edges around my sidewalk and driveway? I think it’s a nice contrast to the verbena swaying behind the mailbox, attracting butterflies.

Anyway….

You get the idea. One flower, many stories!