If you love perennial Candytuft, just wait until you grow its heavy-blooming, long-flowering annual cousin! Globe Candytuft is a groundcover bloomer useful for poor, sandy, or dry soils -- and absolutely spectacular all summer long with big 2-inch bloom clusters of brightest violet-purple!
Purple Rain is a tireless bloomer, asking only to have the spent blooms removed before setting new buds. For a large planting, this is as easy as shearing the entire top of the plant! But even a small or accent grouping of Purple Rain is attractive, radiating bright color in the sunny garden.
And thanks to its wildflower past, Purple Rain is attractive to pollinators and very, very adaptable. Butterflies, bees, and moths visit frequently, and the dwarf plant keeps right on going no matter what the weather decides to do. Unseasonable heat, humidity, and even drought are no problem for Purple Rain!
Standing just 10 inches high and spreading 10 to 14 inches wide, this annual offers bright green foliage beneath its canopy of blooms. Handsome seedheads follow the final wave of flowers; deadhead them promptly and the plant may overwinter in mild climates, setting one more season of blooms for you. Few plants are as easy and hardworking as Purple Rain!
Great for the rock garden, coastal areas, dry slopes, and banks of loose soil, this Globe Candytuft is also a fine filler for any garden bare spot. Its compact size means you can tuck it into any sunny spot, even those cavities in the tops of rock walls, tight places in the foundation, or containers of all kinds.
Purple Rain is much easier to start indoors and transplant than the species, which prefers to be direct sown. So you have your choice: scatter the seeds outdoors in fall for earlier blooms (often beginning in mid-spring in warm climates, and continuing into summer), or start indoors in late winter for early spring transplant. If direct-sowing, cover the seeds very lightly. If starting indoors, pop one seed into each bio sponge of your Bio Dome or sow them on the top of the seed tray, barely covering them with soil mix. Temperatures of 68 to 80 degrees F are ideal, and germination can take up to a month.
Once the seedlings emerge, however, things happen fast! Transplan them as soon as they have 2 sets of true leaves -- they will be setting buds and blooming before you know it! Have fun with this new annual from seed, and send us photos to let us know how you are using it in your landscape! Packet is 50 seeds.
