Phlox paniculata 'Shortwood'

'Shortwood' is one of the best of the tall garden phloxes, a strong pink that stands up straight and blooms for weeks in the heart of summer. Each large, domed panicle is packed with fragrant flowers, clear rose-pink around a deeper magenta eye, and the whole plant reads from across the garden, four feet of upright color that never seems to flop.

The plant descends from the famous white 'David', the phlox that made mildew resistance respectable, and shares that parent's clean foliage; 'Shortwood' was selected in Pennsylvania by the plantsman Sinclair Adam. The name honors the garden of Stephanie Cohen, the writer and lecturer known to a generation of gardeners as the Perennial Diva, whose own garden is called Shortwood. The name has nothing to do, we should add, with the old pulpwood measure that most Southerners hear first in the word.

Garden phlox is a native of the eastern and central United States, a Polemoniaceae in the flame-flowered company that gives the genus its name, phlox being Greek for flame. The long-tubed summer flowers are a magnet for the pollinators built to reach them: swallowtails and other butterflies, ruby-throated hummingbirds, the hovering hummingbird moths at dusk, and the long-tongued bees. Few perennials feed so many for so long.

Give 'Shortwood' full sun and rich, moist, well-drained soil, with enough space between plants for air to move and keep mildew at bay; resistant is not the same as immune, and good airflow still earns its keep. Set the tall pink spires in the middle or back of a sunny border, a cottage planting, or a pollinator bed, and cut a few stems for the vase, where the fragrance carries indoors. One honest word: deer and rabbits are as fond of phlox as gardeners are, so protect the plant where browsing pressure runs high.