halleri (densifolia)—March bloomer, tuberous. Not many leaves but plenty of clusters of rosy, or purple, flowers; six to eight inches.
lutea—Eight-inch clump-makers with lacy blue-green leaves. Yellow flowers appear in June and repeat later. Likes to keep cool in the shade, or have its roots under a rock. Won’t grow in extreme heat.
nobilis—Tuberous type, upright to eight inches, with leaflets both wedge-shaped and deep-toothed. It may have as many as twenty spurred white flowers per cluster, tipped with yellow and spotted with purple.
rupestris—Ferny-leaved eight-inch perennial with short-spurred yellow flowers. Nontuberous.
CARE. Any garden soil with drainage. Partial or light shade, or sun. Plant tuberous types in fall.
PROPAGATION. Division, seeds.
SPECIAL USES. Borders, rock gardens, wall plantings, edging.
Dianthus Caryophyllaceae Pink
There are some very special treasures for every garden in this big family of spicy-scented plants with flowers that seem to have been fringed with pinking shears. There are impermanent perennials that flower the first year like annuals, biennials like sweet William that often self-sow, longer lived types that tuft or spread out to make low flowering mounds or mats, elusive alpines for the rock-garden connoisseur, pixies with tiny half-inch flowers, and great garden carnations. Every year new hybrids make the list longer.
Make your selection, of course, according to size, scent, growing habits, and the color scheme of your little garden. For the miniature rock garden, the rose-colored species D. alpinus stays under three inches; D. neglectus combines pink and buff, and there are many more. The Allwoodi hybrid varieties are sturdy, lasting, and flower freely for most of the summer. The cheddar pinks (D. casius varieties) are clumpy; the maiden pinks make mats; the cottage or grass pinks are tufted; sweet William (D. barbatas) is one of the clusterheads; the “annuals” (usually forms of D. chinensis) will flower early when seed is started indoors, repeat the performance if cut back after the first flowering, and may even live to bloom once more the second year.