Golden Lace grows into center of activity
If you are developing a garden for beauty and hoping to host pollinators like bees and butterflies, then put Golden Lace at the top of your list. This sizzling summer perennial is a selection of Patrinia scabiosifolia and native to Korea. Oh, my gosh, this is a plant that absolutely commands attention.
Once you start growing this 4- to 5-foot-tall plant loaded with thousands of tiny golden yellow blossoms, you will want to pull up a chair with a good pair of close-focusing binoculars, your digital camera and hang out all day.
You will also want to bring along an insect nature guide as you will have more bees and wasps than you ever knew existed.
But don’t worry, butterflies adore the blossoms, too. We have had Silver Spotted Skippers, Long-tailed Skippers, Gray hairstreaks and Red-banded Hairstreaks. Then to make it more exciting the pollinator predators also show up. On any given day the Green Anole lizards are there, lying still, waiting for the perfect moment to grab their version of the Happy Meal.
The Golden Lace is rocking at my workplace, the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens in Savannah, and you can count on it to do the same in your garden. It is a cold hardy perennial in zones 4 to 9. It has been known to re-seed a little which I would welcome here but is easy to pull if one comes up where it is not wanted.
Ours is in the cottage garden growing in close proximity to Joe Pye weed which is also doing its part bringing in the big boys of the pollinator world like the Eastern Tiger swallowtails and the Palamedes swallowtails. The rose pink of the Joe Pye is a thrilling companion.
Blue Fortune agastache or Black Adder agastache would make the ultimate companion planting with the blue to violet shades of spikey bottlebrush-like flowers. It would also create what would be a pollinator heaven as they too bring in bees, and butterflies in big numbers.
Golden Lace will reach a spread of around 3 feet. It thrives in fertile well-drained soil and needs plenty of sun to reach its maximum potential. It starts blooming in mid-summer lasting for weeks and then continues to dazzle in the landscape as the remaining floral parts retain that bright cheerful golden color. If you are a cut flower lover, you will rejoice as everyone raves about the texture and beauty in the vase regardless whether it is cut in bloom or after the petals have fallen.
I’ve mentioned Blue Fortune agastache and Joe Pye Weed as great landscape partners, but also consider salvias. Favorite choices would be Victoria Blue, Mystic Spires Blue, and Southern Living’s new Amistad salvia with the dark violet blossoms and black calyces. These would make great complementary color partners but also do their part in bringing not only bees and butterflies, but hummingbirds, too.
Golden Lace is still not a staple of the local garden center, so if yours doesn’t have it or can’t get it, don’t fret. It seems to be readily available through several perennial mail-order sites. Give it a try. I promise the whole family will be amazed at the pollinator activity.
