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| Photo Credit: Gerald Klingaman |
| Phlox divaricata is well-suited for gardens throughout the eastern US. |
Shade is both a blessing and a curse. Because gardeners are not immune to the heat of the blazing sun, shade makes any garden more pleasant to be, but it limits the choice of plants that can be successfully grown. Especially lacking are flowering perennials that give good display and thrive in the shade. Fortunately, there’s wild sweet William (Phlox divaricata). This lavender to pinkish-purple (or occasionally white) flowering plant not only grows naturally in the shady areas of a garden, it produces a beautiful display without much fuss or bother for the gardener.
One of our native woodland phloxes, wild sweet William (also called wild blue phlox) grows best in partial shade, but like most part-shade plants, it’ll grow in sun if it gets some water in summer. It’s also adaptable enough that it’ll grow in heavy shade.
| Add Photo to Journal |  | | Photo Credit: Gerald Klingaman | | Wild sweet William works well in the woodland garden. |
The plant is hardy from zones 4-9, ranging from southern Canada to Michigan and as far south as Louisiana and Georgia.Plants are pubescent, much-branched and grow 10-16 inches tall on slender stems. The growth habit is intermediate between the sprawling form of creeping phlox (P. subulata) and the stiffly erect form of the summer flowering garden phlox (P. paniculata). Tubular flowers bloom from early April through mid-May (but peak bloom is toward the earlier part of the season). They measure 1 inch wide and are produced in a terminal cluster. White and pink forms are occasionally found in the wild. Wild sweet William shrinks away in the heat of summer but reemerges in autumn, with its foliage persisting throughout winter.
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