Watching the Gardens Evolve: Florida Scrub Skullcap

Sometimes I really irritate myself.  When I went to look for a picture of how an area of the garden looked when we first planted it earlier this spring, I realized that I had taken exactly zero closeup photos.  I remember thinking that the garden looked much too bare to be worth photographing.  Good grief - SURELY by now I would know how much fun it is to watch the evolution of growing things throughout the seasons!

Anyway, here is the best I can do:  a greatly enlarged (and therefore fuzzy) "closeup" of one corner of my newly planted front flower beds, taken on April 17th of this spring....

I want you to notice the 3 plants that are right at the corner, in the center of the photo.  The tall, rather leggy plant is Ohio spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis).   The 2 shorties in front of it are Florida scrub skullcaps (Scutellaria arenicola) that I purchased, on a whim, from Dara at 7 Pines Native Plant Nursery.

I love skullcaps, but I knew nothing about this particular species except what Dara told me.  Since I really didn't know what I was getting, my hopes were high, but my expectations were pretty low.  Frankly, I'd be happy if these 2 plants liked where I planted them enough to survive without looking too bedraggled.

Here's what those 3 plants look like right now.  I've been enjoying the Ohio spiderwort, which has been blooming every day for weeks and weeks.  That shade of blue just lifts my spirits.  I had literally forgotten about the scrub skullcap, so I was shocked to realize, yesterday morning, that some of the blue in that corner of the garden was actually coming from a bloom spike on the Florida scrub skullcaps.  How exciting!

Looking at this closer photo, the skullcap bloom spike is going diagonally from the lower right hand corner to about 2/3 of the way to the upper left hand corner.  The blue in the background at the top comes from the spiderwort blossoms.

I do need to get a closer photo of the blossoms for you..... 

Comparing my plants to those I see in pictures online, I think these 2 individuals may be getting a little too much water.  The plants seem taller than expected and rather floppy, which I didn't anticipate, and the bloom spike a little too elongated.  Greg's wanting to get our grass up to a reasonable standard, since we're living in a neighborhood, so we're using the sprinkler system that was here when we purchased our home.  I don't think these plants need or particularly want the extra water, but hopefully it won't hurt them too much either.  Certainly you don't get much better drainage than our highly sandy soil.


I'll be watching these guys a lot more carefully in the upcoming days.  What a great surprise on a hot and humid mid-June morning!