Meet the newest and most colorful Proven Winners spirea, Double Play® Candy Corn™. The show starts in earliest spring, when the new growth emerges bright candy apple red. As it matures, it turns pineapple yellow, and the new growth continues to emerge bright orange all season. Top it off with dark purple flowers in late spring/early summer, and you’ve got a display you really have to see to believe. Be sure to click the image tab below to see just how showy this low-maintenance spiraea is!

You may be familiar with the “Big Bang™ Theory of Nursery Sales Success”. That’s the theory that states: The bigger the flower power, the more your customers will buy the plant. Well, if that’s true, Double Play® Big Bang™ will definitely offer your customers some serious bang for their buck. Its tight, dense, spreading form makes it a dream to work with in any sunny landscape situation and it will add a massive shot of shimmering orange color to the spring landscape as it flushes, starting off the season with a (Big) bang!! The foliage matures to glowing gold and each of its stems buds up in early June with buds opening later in the month producing massive flattened heads of bright pink flowers, bigger than you’ve seen on other lesser Spirea. Double Play® Big Bang is an easy care wonder that is deer proof, drought resistant and very rewarding.

Bright yellow foliage throughout the spring and summer make this an outstanding accent plant. Very compact habit. Flowers are pink in June and July. Fall color pinkish red.

It’s hard to believe that a plant with such outstanding bloom and such tolerance of partial to full shade is so unknown, but that is just the dilemma faced by this American Beauties selection. Big, deep green foliage emerges in the spring and forms a tight, upright mound that tops off with stem-ending buds in late May. Spectacular, 2″ long, tubular flowers open in June showing a yellow interior that flares to a star at the end while the exterior is deep red, providing a unique, two-toned look that will light up your shade garden. Spigelia likes well-drained soil but is just at home in moist, organic soils and will provide a flower show each year that will be enhanced by colorful hummingbirds seeking nectar.

Golden Sunset™ is a fabulous native grass with olive-green foliage and golden yellow flowers that attract butterflies. Indiangrass is very vigorous and works well when interplanted with assertive native perennials and other native grasses, in a more manicured landscape just remove the flower heads after flowering to reduce spread.

Spectacular in its ability to light up the late summer and fall garden, this plant has gotten a bad reputation from its relationship to the Goldenrod garden weed, but it deserves a feature spot in the American Beauties garden due to its explosive bloom and its magnetic attraction of birds and butterflies. Deep green foliage forms a tight, clean mound in the garden with multiple stems, each topped with 12-18″ long arching, spreading strings of flower buds by late July. Buds open in early to mid-August revealing incredible strings of bright yellow flowers that cover the plant and continue in color well into September. Loads of butterflies, especially Monarchs, make a bee line to this plant when in bloom, while a whole array of colorful birds find the seed from spent flowers an incredibly tasty treat. ‘Fireworks’ is easy to grow, tolerant of hot sun and dry soils, and provides a searing mass of color when planted in groups.

Sweet Goldenrod is one of those unknown plants that makes you wonder why with its brilliant late summer bloom that lights up the garden and draws pollinators from everywhere! Narrow and upright, stems are topped by branched plumes of small, daisy-like flowers through September.

Bright clusters of small yellow flowers are held atop the tall, fine green foliage. Butterflies and praying mantises flock to the yellow flowers that bloom from the late summer into the fall offering the last bit of nectar of the season. syn. Euthamia graminifolia var. graminifolia.

Bring your landscape alive with pollinators that will flock to this narrow, upright grower that blooms from late summer to early fall. Small flowers are borne on a stem ending spike and feature yellowish-white rays surrounding yellow central disks putting on a subtle but very satisfying summer show.

Wild Senna’s bright yellow flowers bloom from July-August. Their full blossoms attract many bees and butterflies. In the fall, its beautiful leaf colors and the formation of long black pods with seeds bring in many birds.