Here’s a favorite flower of Carrie Woleben-Meade, design manager of Mariani Landscape in Lake Bluff.
CIMICIFUGA RACEMOSA ‘BRUNETTE’
Black bugbane
WHY SHE LOVES IT: The plant offers a wonderful foliage color and texture throughout the season and then, when almost everything in the garden is done flowering, it produces wonderfully fragrant white spires to carry the garden to fall.
ABOUT CIMICIFUGA RACEMOSA: It grows 3 to 6 feet tall and flowers in September.
WHAT IT LIKES: It thrives in moist, dappled shade.
TRICKS OF THE TRADE: My garden receives minimal attention — it is definitely a survival-of-the-fittest environment — and this plant thrives. I do water during the hot summer months.
BEST BUDS: Anemone, native geraniums, ferns, variegated Solomon’s seal.
