Say Goodbye To Bare Garden Patches With A Fast-Growing Perennial Flower

It's always so frustrating when each individual plant in your garden is thriving, but there are so many gaps and bare spots between them that they don't form a cohesive landscape. Even worse, these bare spots can easily become covered in unsightly weeds. So try filling that spot with iconic garden flowers that happily come back every year and grow pretty fast to take up space. They quickly fill in those gaps and help unify your garden design. One of the best plants for this is the gorgeous wand flower (Oenothera lindheimeri).

Wand flowers, also known as gaura, have pink or white flowers and are native to the southeastern United States. With a height of about 5 feet and a spread of around 2 feet, these perennials are perfect for filling in spots in your garden thanks to their moderately quick growth rate. As long as you grow them in a spot that meets their needs and pair them with other plants that thrive in similar conditions, they're sure to complement your garden design and provide a cohesive flower bed that comes back year after year. 

Hardy in USDA Hardiness Zones 5 through 9, wand flowers thrive in full sun, though they can also handle part shade. They grow best in well-draining soils that are somewhat acidic. Once your wand flowers are established, they are quite tolerant of both heat and drought. You may want to stake them once they start blooming, to prevent their flower spikes from toppling over. Alternatively, you can just plant them densely enough that the other plants help to support their flowers. Avoid overfertilizing to help prevent this issue as well. You can deadhead your wand flower to help it bloom all season, or provide it with a "Chelsea chop", or heavy pruning, in spring to ensure it has a more compact growing habit. Prune back your gaura in the fall after it has finished blooming for the year.

Wand flowers are perfect for adding to sparse pollinator gardens, as they are loved by bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other pollinators. Pairing them with other hardy perennial flowers like coneflowers (Echinacea spp.) and black eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) is a perfect way to fill in bare spots while creating a lush, low-maintenance garden made up of North American natives. Even better, all three plants are deer-resistant. So you won't have to find ways to repel deer from your garden to keep these flowers growing.