Rodgersia (Rodger’s flower)
* Common name: Rodger’s flower
Rodgersia ‘Chocolate Wing’ in spring.
* Botanical name: Rodgersia pinnata
* What it is: Rodger’s flower or Rodgersia is a little-known, under-used perennial flower that offers an especially useful option in shaded, damp spots in the yard.
This plant has big, leathery leaves and pinkish-white flower spikes that peak in June and July and look like overgrown astilbes. It’s also a big plant in general, growing up to four feet tall.
‘Chocolate Wing’ is a particularly showy variety for its young chocolate-bronze leaves that turn green with dark tinges and its darker-pink flowers.
* Size: Plants grow three to four feet tall and slowly spread by rhizomes to three feet and beyond.
* Where to use: Rodgersia prefers damp soil and partly shaded spots. It’ll even do wet soil. So this is a good choice for rain gardens, low-lying areas, along stream and pond edges, or massing in damp woodland gardens.
Plants will grow in full sun, but figure on supplemental watering there.
* Care: Water during dry spells; otherwise leaves will brown around the edges and maybe even go completely dormant.
Scatter a granular fertilizer formulated for flowers over the bed in early spring.
Flower spikes can be cut off after bloom, then plants can be cut completely to the ground in late fall or any time before early spring after the leaves brown.
Clumps can be dug, divided, and replanted in early spring if they’re growing beyond where you want or you’d like to “expand the flock” elsewhere.
* Great partners: Shrubs that take similar damp and part-shade conditions include native smooth hydrangeas, fothergilla, summersweet, chokeberry, buttonbush, and in the wettest areas, swamp azalea. Leucothoe is a good evergreen partner.