CrazyBlue Russian Sage

If you have dry areas in your garden, you know how hard it can be to bring them to life. So here is the answer – the Lime Zinger Sedum. This innovative hybrid plant combines the dense, weed-smothering habit of many low sedums with the colorful pink flowers usually seen on taller, border sedum. A low carpet up to 18 inches across, but just 4 inches tall, the small, fleshy leaves are apple-green and edged in red. By late summer it produces many 4-inch clusters of light-pink flowers that continue all the way through fall. In warmer zones it tends to be evergreen, but otherwise re-sprouts in spring and rapidly gives you that handsome groundcover again. Super-easy to grow, it thrives in hot, dry places, on shallow soil, and in rock gardens. Use it to fill pockets in walls or between paving slabs, or use it in a row to create a charming edging on a small bed. It can also be used in containers that are sure to survive your absence during the summer.

• A dense carpet of apple-green leaves edged in red
• Covered in heads of pink flowers through later summer and fall
• Very drought and sun tolerant – ideal for dry and xeric gardens
• Evergreen in warmer zones
• Reliable, super-easy and perfect for those impossible spots in your garden

The Lime Zinger Sedum thrives in full sun, no matter how hot it gets. Grow it in any well-drained soil, and that included sandy soils, rocky, shallow earth, and poor soils in urban gardens. Water for a while after planting, but once it is established it will survive drought for a very long time. Rabbits don’t eat it and it has excellent resistance to the leaf-spot problems that sedums have in some parts of the country. It is cold-hardy in zone 4, and grows just as happily, remaining evergreen, in hot zones too. Trim in late fall or early spring, before new growth appears, to maintain that neat, dense mat of green.