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Plants for Your Bog Garden

Making It Grow! Minute logo

  Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. I’m looking for plants for my new bog garden and the first one I want to add is Pinckneya. I fell in love with this small tree, maturing at about 15 to twenty feet, when I saw it in full flower growing beside a stream in Swan Lake Iris Gardens in Sumter. It’s similar to a poinsettia in that the clusters of actual flowers are not particularly showy, but the pink sepals are spectacular. It was discovered in the 1770’s by the Botanist William Bartram who named it for General Charles Cotesworth Pinkney. In those times this tree was important as a pharmaceutical – the bark contains cinchona, and was used to lower temperatures from fevers malaria, giving it the common name of fever tree. This plant needs moisture – more than plants growing in a usual landscape would require and flowers best with full sun.

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Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.