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.

My garden never met a mullein that didn't love it. Heavy soil, high water table, plenty of sun, smaller things to smother, larger things to poke up through, plenty of bees to service the flowers. Yep, it's verbascum heaven here.
Here's Verbascum thapsiforme, doing everything it does best.
The huge leaves of the fast-growing rosette arch out over everything in reach, shading them and, then, as older leaves tire and flop to the ground, smothering them directly. This plant is self-mulching! (Click the picture to see how big the plant really is.) I'll yank off the leaves from this rosette that would otherwise flatten the dwarf hostas. All verbascums I'm interested it are true biennials, with foliage the first year, a titantic skyward-thrusting bloom structure the second, jillions of seeds that germinate readily, and a quick death for the mother plant when the blooming is done. (Verbascums I'm NOT interested in? There are demure knee-high "pretty" ones that are easy to raise for flower shows. Too lady-like I'm afraid.) Verbascums pop up where they will; cracks between stones are just as appealing as open spots in beds. Excess youngsters are easy to pull; I suppose you could transplant them too when they are really young, or it's really early in Spring. But they are tap-rooted, so you'd need to move quickly.
Some verbascums—verbasca?—have rosettes that are in themselves a show, with furry as well as colorful leaves; we'll see one in a later post. But the point, literally, of verbascums is more in the architectural flower-spikes, which for me, for Verbascum thapsiforme, can get eight feet tall.
Here's one au naturelle; thank you Wikipedia. Blooming can start later in June, and doesn't finish until (can it be? I'll document this season!) Labor Day and beyond.

There is never a day hot enough, a week dry enough, for the performance to flag. And thanks to the fuzzy leaves, no one—insect, bird, deer, rabbit—ever takes so much as one bite.
This is, in short and in tall, the perfect plant for all sunny Summer gardens.