Common names for plants can often create confusion, especially among botanical nerds like myself. The main reason we like to rattle off multi-syllabic Latin names is that there is never any question as to what plant we are talking about. In the case of common names however, many different plants can share similar common names depending on what part of the country one comes from… My point here is that while common names can be misleading, in the case of heaths and heathers, nobody really cares! Not even the nursery professionals.
I often tell gardeners in our region to rediscover their “Evergreen State”, which (in a play on words) simply means to show some gardening style with the structure, texture and color of conifers. Around here nature has the many shades of green covered, but how about some bold blues and bright yellows? When all of the deciduous shrubs and trees have…