No offense against hostas, but I like a little color in my shade garden. Thankfully astilbes come to the rescue. Beauties like ‘Bridal Veil’ (pictured above) bloom for several weeks in the summer and give some life to the shade garden.
Astilbes like cool, moist soil and need to be watered in dry conditions. Other than that they are carefree plants without any disease or insect problems.
I’m usually very good about making plant stakes or maps for all my gardens so I know what I’m growing. I’ve gotten a little mixed up when it comes to my astilbes because I’ve moved some of them around too many times. The garden center where I buy them is not helping either. I thought I had one cultivar, ‘(not) Ellie’, that was a mystery, but I recently discovered I have at least 2 more that were mislabeled when I bought them.
One of my favorite astilbes is ‘Spinell’. However if you look up that name on the internet, the cultivar is described on dozens of sites as being red. My plant is hot pink or berry, but clearly not red:
This was labeled ‘Montgomery’, but like ‘Spinell’, it’s supposed to be red. I don’t think so:
I’m confident this astilbe is indeed ‘Fanal’, one of my favorite reds:
And I love ‘Visions’ because it blooms like crazy:
