What’s old is new again. 

Plants are no different than clothing.  What’s popular today will probably fall off the radar screen a few years from now only to be replaced with something new and trendy.  And then a few more years down the road something else will come along to catch everyone’s attention.  Eventually the cycle will come full circle and styles will start to repeat themselves.  And what was old will once again be new.

Breeders are constantly coming out with new and improved varieties of the same old shrubs that your grandma and grandpa had growing around the foundation of their farm house.  In most cases these new versions have better growth habits or longer blooming seasons or improved disease resistance.  Occasionally a variety that was developed for the floral industry finds its way into the landscape trade.  Such is the case with a new series of shrubby Hypericums. 

Hypericums are a group of shrubs and ground covers known as Saint Johnswort.  They all have cheery bright golden yellow 5 petaled flowers with a prominent sunburst of stamens in the center.  The ground cover versions usually grow to about one foot tall and the shrubby forms can range from 2-4 feet tall.  In our climate most are deciduous or at least partially deciduous.  They prefer full sun and once established seem to be pretty indestructible.  The one flaw many of them have is a propensity towards rust.  On the underneath side of the leaves orange colored pustules will form and gradually the plant will look pretty nasty.  Some years are worse than others.

As a landscape contractor in California, Hypericum was one of our ground cover mainstays.  We would mow it to the ground in February and by March it was up and growing and by June it was a blaze of color.  It spread rapidly and was very effective for slope stabilization.  Unfortunately, in the northwest it does tend to get rust and we hardly ever sell it any more. 

Six or seven years ago gardeners were all a gaga about a showy shrubby Hypericum known as “Albury Purple”.  It grew to about 2-3 feet tall and had dusky purple leaves which made a stunning accent in a container.  Also popular was a gold leaved version, the name of which now escapes me.  I had the gold one growing in my back yard for several years until I did some major renovation and had to remove it.  Both of these varieties are now gone and you will be hard-pressed to find them anywhere.  But sometime in the future someone will “rediscover” them and they will be “new” again.

So getting back to these new Hypericums that came over from the floral side I want to tell you that we first saw them when the Missus and I were in England in the fall of 2005.  They were being sold with other fall plants like mums and asters only instead of flowers, their claim to fame was a prominent display of berries held high above the foliage in clusters that resembled tiny rose hips.  They were very eye catching.

Three years later they have made their way across the Atlantic and into local garden centers in the northwest as the “Mystical Series” Hypericums.  You can find them under the Novalis Plants that Work Brand in one and two gallon containers.  Mystical Beauty sports salmon colored berries, Mystical Orange has orange berries, Mystical Black has black berries and Mystical Red Star has red berries.  The berry clusters are ideal for cutting and using for fall arrangements or you can just enjoy them in your garden.  They will blend well with all the rich warm colors of the fall season including ornamental grasses which are always a hit this time of year.  And as an added bonus, they are resistant to rust.

You can find out more information on the Mystical Hypericums by going to the Novalis website.  Just Google Novalis Plants that Work and the website will come up.  Then you can look over all the different plants that this company is marketing, many of which are new introductions of the old plants our parents and grand parents grew in their gardens.  In fact some of them are identical; they’ve just been “rediscovered”.