Epilobium Species, Blooming Sally, Fireweed, Great Willowherb, Rosebay Willow Herb

This is one of my favorite flowering plants. Yes, it can spread around your bed but nowhere near the degree of Gooseneck Loosestrife and...Read More a few others. As the saying goes: location, location, location. Not everything is suitable for every garden! That should be the very first lesson any gardener ever learns.

My soil is heavy clay and it gets quite dry in the summer. Over the years I have amended the soil with organic matter but it is still primarily clay. Very fertile but very heavy. The fireweed has spread throughout the full sun bed in which I planted it, but has made no effort to jump paths or sidewalks in order to spread to other beds. I have never had any seedlings come up anywhere.

The fireweed starts blooming in early June as the Baptisia is finishing. I love the combination of the large blue spikes with the delicate pink spikes. As long as I dead-head, the fireweed keeps blooming through the fall. The bees love it.

Again, though, not every plant is for every garden. If I lived near a moist area or wetland I might think twice before growing fireweed. But that's something every gardener should consider before buying ANY plant as I have seen a lot of things become invasive in the right conditions that people would not normally think of as invasive.

I have a love/hate relationship with Fireweed. In NJ, I wanted to grow it so bad, but couldn't get it to grow for me. Now that I live i...Read Moren Alaska, the stuff is everywhere, so I take it for granted. I allow it a tiny patch in my garden, because it IS a gorgeous flower, but it's a battle to keep it under control here in Alaska. It's SUPER INVASIVE.

It can range from being short (to the knee caps) to super tall (towering over a man's head.) The flowers are a lovely mauve-pink and the fall foliage looks like fire- red, orange, yellow- hence the name. The flowers make EXCELLENT jelly, but the flowers are small, so they're very labor intensive to collect. The plant also is a favorite of aphids, so if the plants are crowded, they get postively overrun with bugs. Fireweed can very quickly become a jungle (fit for a child's fort) so you MUST keep it in check or you will be sorry. But it us a beautiful, useful plant and has it's place in the landscape.

This plant was growing in a pot of purple coneflowers that I purchased at a nursery. It is flourishing in a bed on the north side of my ...Read Morehouse and receives a bit of morning sun, and otherwise is in bright shade. I am staying with 'neutral' for the time being, as I've only had it for around 3 months. We'll see if it's invasive in my area. FYI, I'm in West Texas, and we have temperatures in the high 90's to low 100's on a regular basis, and very low humidity. I'm surprised that it's doing so well, seeing that others commenting all live in such a different environment.

A native roadside plant in the PNW, often appearing in moist disturbed areas (old burns). The seed fluff can be used in weaving or for s...Read Moretuffing. The leaves are rich in Vit C, and be made into a tea. The outer stem fibers can be peeled off, dried, soaked in water and twisted into twine. Very pretty plant.