At ‘The Garden Guy’s’ house 2020 was pretty much a miraculous year for butterflies. As you might guess I had an abundance of plants making sure pollinators of all sorts felt welcome in the garden. In May I wrote a column telling you about a new Sunstar pentas series of making their debut. I had already grown Sunstar Pink that seriously had the largest florets of any pentas series I had ever grown. It was a favorite of the Gulf Fritillaries in my 2019 testing. Next, I put the Sunstar Red to the big test, and I am delighted to tell you this has champion written all over it.
At ‘The Garden Guy’s’ house the flower beds are full of a lot of ‘race horses’ soto speak. What I mean is that I have everything a butterfly or a hummingbird could want and they grow at full throttle for the entire long, hot summer. If you aren’t tough and fairly vigorous you get swallowed up by those that are. Sunstar Red was a champ growing right alongside the new Luscious Golden Gate lantana and Blue Boa hummingbird mint. Not only did they compete and hold their space at 2 feet tall and wide, but they bloomed until Old Man Winter (no relation) took them out November 30.
They were visited by swallowtails and hummingbirds throughout the summer. Gulf Fritillaries liked them like the Sunstar Pink and there were frequent stops by American Ladies and Common Buckeyes. But it was the variety of swallowtails that kept me mesmerized.There are four colors in the series coming from Proven Winners, pink, red, a stunning lavender that I combined with Truffula Pink Gomphrena and a rose. They have all won awards from North to South. In fact, there were 78 awards before the 2020 set of university trials.
