Sacramento Digs Gardening: Coral bells with a difference

This Primo Wild Rose Heuchera from Proven Winners is a lovely wine purple. These plants brighten up shady spots. (Photos: Debbie Arrington)

New varieties come in eye-popping colors

This nostalgic favorite has a bold new look – thanks to clever breeding.

The little flowers above the leaves add

a cute touch in spring.

Coral bells, the common name for the Heuchera family, are relatively easy to hybridize. Different species and parents readily cross with each other, creating new varieties with all sorts of interesting characteristics. There are fewer than 40 species of Heuchera (including several native to California and the Southwest), but hundreds of named hybridized varieties.

Their often-variegated foliage comes in almost every color, from creamy white to silvery charcoal. As a bonus, charming sprigs of flowers – the bells – sprout from the low-growing mass of attractive deeply cut leaves.

Great choices for a low-water garden, Heucheras are naturally drought-tolerant perennials; they need only weekly or twice monthly irrigation. Most bloom readily in partial shade. And they’re super low care; just snip off the spent flowers. Like most perennials, they die back in winter, but come on strong each spring.

My favorite Heuchera right now adds a brilliant splash of wine purple in a shady spot next to the patio. Part of the Primo series from Proven Winners, Primo Wild Rose holds its unusual color throughout the year. The vivid leaves are veined in dark gray and glisten with a metallic touch. The pink flowers? They’re just cute.

GENERAL GARDENING

An article about gardening.

Keywords:

shade gardening shade plants gardening Sacramento Proven Winners coral bells Heuchera perennials

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Food in My Back Yard Series

May 13: Your plants can tell you more than any calendar can

May 6: Maintain soil moisture with mulch for garden success

April 29: What's (already) wrong with my tomato plants?

April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)

April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers

April 8: When to plant summer vegetables

April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths

March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth

March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space

March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds

March 4: Potatoes from the garden

Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later

Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space

Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants

Feb. 4: Starting in seed starting

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Garden Checklist for week of May 18

Get outside early in the morning while temperatures are still cool – and get to work!

* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.

* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.

* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.

* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters. Transplant seedlings for many of the same flowers.

* Plant dahlia tubers.

* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.

* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.

* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.

* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.

* Are birds picking your fruit off trees before it’s ripe? Try hanging strips of aluminum foil on tree branches. The shiny, dangling strips help deter birds from making themselves at home.

* As spring-flowering shrubs finish blooming, give them a little pruning to shape them, removing old and dead wood. Lightly trim azaleas, fuchsias and marguerites for bushier plants.

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