Daylilies are essential with their hardiness, ease of culture, intensity and size of colorful bloom, and season of bloom that is beyond the initial May and June crush. So it's with excitement as well as some pique that, only in this its third year in the ground, has this one, 'Carolicolossal', finally started into bloom.
But to the positive first: It is in bloom, and aren't they terrific? (OK, isn't it terrific? Maybe someday, one of these years, there will be another blossom, and another. Or even—I'm not afraid to dream big—a few flowers simultaneously.) If I hadn't planted the darned thing in such an important place—at the near-to-the-house start of the central spine of grass that's the center, the runway, of the entire property—I'd be merely pleased to see the flower. But there's a lot riding on Cardiocolossal. It needs to look like it needs such prominence, that it expects it. And each Summer that it wasn't in bloom, yet again, called into question its suitability for grandeur, my judgment in selecting it for the role, or (even more humiliating) my ability to grow something as bullet-proof as a daylily to blooming maturity. So Hallelujah! It's old enough to bloom. I am a competent gardener. And as it produces more and more blossoms as a bigger and bigger colony, it will, literally, grow into its role as Start Of The Runway.
And what a starter it is: Enormous spider flowers up to ten inches across, and with no variation in color tip to heart. The deep trumpet portion of daylily flowers are so often radically different in color from the outer reaches of the petals that, in reverse of the norm where coloristic variety is a plus, here it's homogeneity that's the shocker. And because the runway is full of traffic, of admirers, for more than the single month a normal daylily would be in bloom, Carolicolossal is (supposed to be) a rebloomer, with an entire second crop later in the Summer. It's one thing to be a star when everyone expects your performance, quite another when most people wouldn't have had a clue. But why was the road to floral maturity so long? I've had daylilies bloom two months after being planted, for heaven's sake. Carolicolossal is just revving up in its third year. It's a sunny spot, good soil, plenty of water. no predators. What gives? My only thought is that, as usual in a garden where More is Usually More, there was and is plenty of nearby competition. The variegated helianthus 'Lorraine Sunshine' at the left. (What a gift, completely accidental believe me, that its flowers are exactly the same color.) In back (trust me) is a hardy bush jasmine that is not the usual one, Jasminum nudiflorm. Jasminum fruticans, thank you. Who knows what it does besides grow narrow green leaves (which is why it's hardly noticeable in this picture). It's a jasmine, growing happily in New England. And in front, the low needly mound of Picea abies 'Vermont Gold', which I hope and expect will flow outward and onward as a foot-high gold avalanche three, five, eight feet across, out of the bed and onto the lawn of the runway itself.
It would take quite a daylily to assume the role of Diana Ross by making these three other interesting plants mere Supremes in the process. Carolicolossal, you may yet be up to it. I'm finally hopeful.

Kniphofias are one my Red Garden joys: the hot orange, yellow, and red spikes of flowers are unique in hardy perennials. And because the plants so often succumb to wetness in the Winter, they are oddities indeed here in New England. (I do some Extreme Mulching to get them through.)
This season, 'Alcazar' is better than ever, partly just because the clump is another year older.
Six spikes at once! The burnt-orange flowers, with only a bit of yellow in the oldest (at the bottom), are a vivid but not cacaphonous adjunct to the red of the nearby Jacob Cline monarda.
And the height and intensity of Alcazar is also great filler before dahlias (out of sight to the back of it) get going in August.
This is the sister clump, across the pathway. Yes: TEN spikes at once!

Butterfly "Weed" couldn't be more garden-worthy. Heat&cold impervious, drought-proof, immortal, flop-free, and guaranteed to bloom if only you give it sun and any (truly, any) soil, lean or rich, as long as it's well-drained in the Winter. Butterflies really do love it too. An excellent perennial, truly in the top twenty for sunny gardens from Zone 4 - 9. That's Minneapolis to Maine, Madison to Los Angeles: Most of the country!
Here's the species, with the typical uncompromising-orange flowers.
Yes, the picture is fuzzy; it's just a still from today's video on GardenShorts.com.
The plant, at least, is lovely without a doubt. But there's no getting around it: those flowers are orange. There's a natural variation in color, so watchful gardeners and growers have so far identified two named cultivars of different shades. 'Hello Yellow' is indeed just that.
This is probably far more versatile than the orange, coordinating happily but not loudly with blue, white, burgundy, grey, and any other yellow you have around the garden. Widely available—this picture is from the White Flower Farm site. But yellow isn't what I need more of in my Red Gardens. Neither is orange. Red, please. We want more red. And hooray! Here's 'Deep Orange Red' from the late (sob, heave) Seneca Hill.
It's so seriously redder than the species that the the name is too modest. I vote for "Yup, I'm Red All Right. Wadda YOU Gonna Do About It?" But with Seneca Hill in hiatus, where are YOU gonna get it? Perhaps you need to make friends with this great gardener guy I know all about in Rhode Island. Follow his blog even.

Eight feet further, 'Long Stocking'.
A swell daylily, but, in truth, it can't hold a candle to a what flanks it across the pathway:
Ah, 'Web Browser'.

A deep-red spider to eleven inches. Oh yes, eleven. In my book, this is as shocking as a Red Garden daylily can be. Is it getting hot in here, or is it me?

Once you've been stopped by 'Open Hearth', the next stop-light-grade daylily in your path is to the left, at the start of the south pair of beds of the Red Garden.
'Red Suspenders' is darker and, OMG, even larger than 'Open Hearth'.
 And I certainly paid for the added appeal: one pair of 'Suspenders' was $160.  

Having a Red Garden is a great excuse to collect the daylilies that would make even Dolly Parton blush: Gigantic flowers—five or six inches is waaaay puny: I'm talking 8, 10, 11 inches here. Flagrantly juvenile color combinations too, with yellow AND orange AND red all seeing who can shout the loudest. Shade your eyes: Here's the smallest and most tasteful of the bunch, 'Open Hearth.'

The flowers are about six inches, on shortish stems so numerous that on some mornings the whole airspace above the foliage is solid blossom. And like all daylilies, thankfully, Open Hearth isn't dampened one bit by my high water table, let alone a winter-flooded front-of-the-bed location.
As Dolly would exclaim."Whoo-EEE!"  This is one powerfully- proud perennial.

If Giacometti had designed perennials instead of sculpture,
this would be one of his greatest:
Asian burnet is so distinctive, to elongatedly elegant, that I have it right by the path to my back door: It's a star, worthy of such prime real estate. Strong straight-arrow, nearly leafless flower stems shoot up almost five feet.
They filigree the foreground, so are the perfect front detail to embellish long-distance views.
The leaves themselves are almost all at the base, and they are a narrow ferny bunch. (The latin is Sanguisorba tenuifolia, where tenuifolia means, literally, "narrow leaves". Think "tenui" like "tenuous" or "attenuated": all mean, one way or another, narrow, thin, stretched.)

The quirky pendant bottle-brush flowers are the Dr. Seuss touch.
Intriguing and even comical, they are the dancing levity atop all this startlingly-severe and anorexic geometry.
Normally in burgundy, pink, or red, this white-flowered form keeps elegance at least in coloring if not in habit. As with all the burnets, tangential pollinators like flies and small wasps are the chosen few, not the usual mainstream bees. Even here, then, the perennial is proud in its iconoclasm.

It's bee-balm season, finally. I say "finally" because I only (at the moment) have one bee-balm, Jacob Cline, and it's the early star of my Red Garden.
(OK, more honestly, the Red Garden isn't very red, at least broadly, until August, when the dahlias and the trumpet vines really get going. I'm working on this, trust me. Bee-balm, late in June, is the "early" indicator that this is, in fact a "red" garden.)
Jacob Cline is the best bee-balm to start with, because unlike so many of the tribe, it never, never, never gets powdery mildew. How's this for a disgusting Wiki-image of P-M on a gourd leaf? Powdery, slippery, slippery in the rainy: When a plant has powdery mildew, it's Pretty Much Slimed-up.
Yuck. Even "mildew-resistant" bee-balms can get PMS: They ain't mildew-proof. But Jacob Cline? Even though I do nothing to prepare for or fight off PMS—no thinning out of the stems to increase air flow, no spraying of anything to kill of an early outbreak, no extra watering in case there's a drought and the famously water-friendly bee-balm would become stressed and therefore more mildew-susceptible—Jacob is free and clear the entire season. So, I say: Grow this bee-balm! Then there won't be any PMS in your Red Garden either. Jacob Cline lets you enjoy what you're supposed to about bee-balms: the long long season of perky big-impact flowers.
My colony has started into bloom just this week, so the display is still young. But it's intense anyway. No staking, no pinching, no dead-heading either. No nothing, just week after week after week of eager cooperative bloom, and month after month of disease-free (but, true, like all bee-balms, boring) green foliage beneath.
The other thrill of bee-balm can be, if you're of the thinking sort, inferred right from the flowers.

Can you see that the perky "You called, boss? Anything I can do for you sir?" flower clusters are made up of individual prong-shaped flowers, one prong up, one prong down? A bit closer look, and with better light to show you how red Jacob really is:

Each flower is like a narrow jaw flung wide open, with the black nostrils (the pollen actually) at the top, and the deep deep throat opened up in the center.
So: Red flowers in warm weather. Red flowers that are deep and tubular (work with me here: throaty is "tubular"). Yup: Bee-balm should really be called Hummer-heaven: the little guys just go wild for it.
Bullet-proof culture, six week, or is it two months or more? of great flowers, guaranteed visits by hummingbirds: Jacob Cline is a Summer star.

As I posted yesterday, Pink is a high mountain to climb. There just isn't that much of it, especially if you've backed yourself into such a spacious corner as I have: My Pink Borders are sixty feet long, and yes, there are two.
So for me, pink includes anything else that goes with pink too: white, burgundy, silver, blue. If it fits, even tangentially, I'll take it.
Here's a white perennial, galega, that I'd never grown before. It seems just about perfect to me: almost four feet all, with eager fresh-green foliage that nobody eats, on stems that no one needs to stake. And it thrives in the heavy and often water-logged soil too. But of course, practical considerations are nothing if the plant isn't pleasing. No worries here: Could those white spikes of flowers be any more scintillating? They are about six inches long.
As always, there's a snake in this Garden of Eden: Out West, galega self-seeds horribly. (It was introduced out West because it's great forage—but you can't prove it by me. Then again, if my colony were outside the deer-fenced gardens, maybe it would be chewed to the ground tomorrow.) I've had no such self-seeding here in New England, and my beds are so large that they are weeded only sporadically: It's not like my galega doesn't have plenty of opportunity. It's so gorgeous I'd welcome some volunteers, actually. As is, I'll divide it instead to establish a colony in the other Pink Border. Only a dozen or two other indomitable successes, whatever the color, and my "Pink" Borders will finally be full.
BTW: Galega comes in—yes—pink, as well as pale blue. I'll get to planting more galegas next year.

It's a point of honor that, while I much prefer white or blue or burgundy or red or yellow or orange to pink, I nonetheless must have a pair of kick-ass Pink Borders just to prove that, yeah, I can still do it fabulously even though I don't particularly want to. One reason I get exasperated with the World of Pink is that there's not that much of it (at least compared to white or yellow). You need to look under every rock, to accept and even celebrate whatever scrap of pink you can find.
OK. I'm up for it. I signed on for the mission, and damn it I'm going to get to the goal.
And besides, then I have that much more opportunity to look under every rock, to find and then grow oddball stuff that I might otherwise not.
Like this surprising elderberry, Sambucus ebulus.
Unlike every other member of this shrubby tribe, it's a perennial. The pinnate leaves and flat heads of white flowers are the dead give-away: We're in Elderberry Country here. Plus the flat heads of dark blue berries that (I hear) they mature to. So far, my colony seems uninterested in fruiting. What put this perennial sambucus into my Pink Borders, though, is the pollen. It's pink.
Click on this marvelous Wiki-picture for a close look. Click again to get eyeball-to-pink-pollen. Pink-eyed, as it were.
And to think, it I hadn't gritted my teeth and committed to the Pink Borders, I wouldn't have ever known about pink pollen. Whew. Glad I was open to the experience.