Include Some Tall Plants in the Garden (Look to the Sky)

Change your garden perspective. Include a few tall plants in the landscape and start looking skyward.

The large castor bean provides bold texture in the garden. The leaves can grow up to 3 feet across and the plant grows 5 to 10 feet tall in one season and up to 40 feet in height in its native environment. The decorative seedpods are highly poisonous, so keep them out of the reach of children.

Growing tall plants next to much shorter plants can also give the illusion of depth in a narrow bed.

They also provide a nice backdrop for nearby gardens. Use tall non-invasive ornamental grasses and perennials like Joe pye weed, ironweed, Lemon Queen helianthus, Rudbeckia maxima, bugbane (Cimicifuga /Actea) and Vitex to add color, motion and seasonal changes to your landscape.

And don’t forget to add a few sunflowers. A favorite of gardeners of all ages, these tall beauties will have you looking skyward in amazement of their height.

A bit more information: Include a few other attention-getting annuals in the garden. Night Scented tobacco (Nicotiana sylvestris) rises 6’ tall and has long narrow tubular flowers that are fragrant at night. Brazilian verbena (Verbena bonariensis) grow 4 to 5 feet tall and is great as a grow-through, container or stand alone flower. It is a vicious reseeder in some area, but many find the hummingbirds it attracts makes the weeding worthwhile. Cosmos is another tall annual and all three tend to reseed and are favorites of the butterflies.