Nine Noble Purples to Add to Your Garden

Whether you choose perennials or bulbs, annuals or vegetables, there are sure to be many hues and shades of purple you can use to delight the senses. With its origins tied to royalty, purple flowers represent dignity, pride and success. In a bouquet, either alone or mixed with other colors, purple blooms represent accomplishment and admiration. In a garden, purple flowers can lend both an air of elegance and stunning beauty.

Penstemon Barbatus Twizzle Purple

Vibrant purple blooms present a new and unique color in penstemon. Twizzle Purple was judged as a first-year flowering perennial by judges who were impressed with the upright plant habit and superb flowering performance.

This North American native blooms profusely with 1-inch tubular flowers on long, slender stalks that grow up to 35 inches high, making this beauty a magnet for pollinators from mid to late summer. Twizzle Purple can be used to add height to combination planters or in landscapes for high-impact color.

Petunia Evening Scentsation

Evening Scentsation won the AAS award for its lovely fragrance as well as its stunning color. This is “one of the best petunias I have seen, nice mounding and spreading habit; excellent fragrance too,” wrote one judge.

Evening Scentsation’s fragrance has notes of hyacinth, sweet honey and rose. As the name implies, the scent is stronger in the evening hours. Evening Scentsation is a medium-sized multiflora type, reaching a height of 5-8 inches, and a width of 30-35 inches and will work well in containers, hanging baskets and in mass.

Salvia Summer Jewel

Summer Jewel Lavender has unique, dusty-lavender-purple colors and is a delight in the garden, as well as a major attractor of pollinators including bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. An extra bonus is how much the Goldfinch loves these flower seeds in the fall. It’s a photo-ready moment when these complementary colors of gold and lavender connect. The early-blooming, stable, compact uniform growth and continuous flowering of this plant are additional positives.

Vinca Jams ‘N Jellies Blackberry

A unique, velvety deep purple flower with a white eye will add excitement to summer gardens.   This superb accent plant will work beautifully in Americana color schemes and in combination with blue, pink, white or lavender. In some settings, the flower petals appear almost black, making this color a designer’s delight.

Easy-to-grow plants have excellent tolerance to drought and heat. Mature plants will reach 10-14 inches tall, making them a perfect medium height divider. The 2-inch flowers are complemented by deep-green, shiny leaves, creating a rich background for the richly dark flowers.

Nicotiana Perfume Deep Purple

Perfume Deep Purple flowers are shaped like stars and have a strong fragrance which scents the air in the evening. The nightly release of the perfume will entice gardeners to relax and linger in their gardens. The rich, lavish deep purple flower color is a unique trait, distinct from other nicotianas. Perfume Deep Purple is easily grown from seed, young green bedding plants, or flowering pot plants. Perfume Deep Purple does not require pinching, pruning, or deadheading to maintain a crown of starry blooms all summer. Quite heat tolerant, plants need minimal maintenance.

Salvia Evolution Violet

‘Evolution’ is the first Salvia farinacea with violet flower spikes. This new color is desirable for garden use as it widens the color choices for “blue/purple” annuals. Belonging to the mint family, Evolution is easy to grow. Gardeners can begin with seed, young bedding plants or flowering potted plants with the confidence that ‘Evolution’ will provide continuous color from early summer to the first hard frost.

Treated as an annual in the North, Evolution may be a perennial in frost-free areas. Salvia farinacea is heat and drought tolerant and low maintenance. No deadheading is needed for all-season color.

Petunia Wave Blue

The velvety, dark blue 2-inch blooms cover this trailing plant for the growing season. The plants are capable of spreading 3 to 4 feet like a ground cover. Mature plant height can be 4 to 7 inches.

The Wave Blue improvement is little garden toil. No pinching or pruning is needed for Wave Blue to flower all season. The plants need moderately fertile soil to maintain the freedom of bloom. Wave Blue is adaptable to any container.

Eggplant Hansel

Hansel was bred by an eggplant lover. Young Hansel eggplants have very few seeds. Hansel’s fruit is tender and nonbitter. Gardeners can harvest the finger-like clusters of fruit when 3 inches in length.

If the fruit stays on the plant until about 10 inches, they remain tender and sweet. This trait offers gardeners a long harvest time. The plant size is small, no taller than 3 feet, which is perfect for container growing. Small eggplants can be harvested only 55 days after planting into containers.

Carrot Purple Haze

Purple Haze is the first imperator-shaped purple carrot. Purple Haze has a purple exterior and orange interior. Circles of cut Purple Haze carrots have two distinct colors: a halo of purple with a bright orange center.

The best appearance of Purple Haze will be raw in salads or coleslaw. This carrot tastes great and is easy to grow from seed. The purple pigment is influenced by soil temperature and drainage. The strongest purple color will occur when plants are grown at 59-68 F.