Garden Guru: Bouquet Dianthus makes perfect pansy pal

In the Lowcountry we find ourselves at the pinnacle of cool season planting and the dianthus has to be high on your list. If you are looking for a pansy pal, this is a must, and yet new breeding has now given us a plant that will bloom well into the warm season too. The Bouquet series is my first choice and they are already showing out near in our cottage garden.

I feel like I have grown up with the Bouquet series. For years it was a series of one, Bouquet Purple. This was like an electrifying shot of energy to the pansy pal market. First, forget the color purple, it is really a shocking iridescent hot pink that will dazzle in any landscape.

Next in the series came Bouquet Rose Magic followed by Bouquet Rose, all equally good performers. Bouquet Rose Magic blooms open white and matures to light pink, then a deep rose color. One flower stalk may contain all of these colors at once.

The Bouquet series of dianthus represents the best in an interspecific hybrid. They are vigorous, durable and born to bloom. Though I am touting them as a pansy pal they will bloom most of the summer in the hot humid south and then rest getting ready for the show to start again in the fall.

Whether you want them as a pansy pal or a petunia partner the result will be the same. I've seen them as a stunning companion with Early Sunrise coreopsis and the Bouquet Rose form the perfect marriage with Zahara Starlight Rose zinnia.

Bouquet Purple was selected as a Mississippi Medallion winner when I was with Mississippi State University. In that same year, it won the Minnesota Select Perennial Plant of the Year. That states something about the perseverance of this flower.

I have had them come back for several years in Mississippi and they were so loved they were planted in medians on hot busy streets where they commanded attention. If you are a cut-flower lover then the Bouquet series will delight as a cut and come again type flower.

The one thing that I have never paid attention to was their ability to bring in butterflies. At the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens, we planted Bouquet Purple along with blue and violet shades of violas and the architectural foliage of cardoon and kale. As the dianthus has started to open, the butterflies have been coming to feast. Sometimes there are two or three feeding on a cluster of blooms.

The Bouquet series and all dianthus prefer well-worked beds that are loose, rich in organic matter and well-drained. When preparing a bed, incorporate two pounds of a slow-release 12-6-6 fertilizer with minor nutrients per 100 square feet of bed space.

Theywill need plenty of sun to really bloom to their potential. You will want to lightly side dress with the fertilizer once a month to keep them growing and producing. During the coolest season feed with a liquid water soluble fertilizer.

Two important steps to your happiness with the dianthus are to mulch to keep the summer soil temperatures moderate as well as to conserve moisture and to deadhead. Deadheading not only keeps the plant looking tidy but also keeps flower stems coming. For cut flowers, it is recommended that stems be cut when three flowers are fully open.

For the prettiest display, set the dianthus out in drifts of three to four plants per square foot. The colors let them combine nicely with blue and purple pansies, pink petunias and dusty miller - and by all means consider inter-planting with spring daffodils.

While I am touting the Bouquet series, keep your eyes also open for the taller Amazon series and the Telstar series which is a Louisiana Select winner. For the long cool season ahead, dianthus will absolutely rock in your garden.

Follow me on Twitter @CGBGgardenguru.

Norman Winter is the director of the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens at the Historic Bamboo Farm, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension.