Getting to Know Bog Rosemary (For Our Parkway) - April 2024

We spent a little bit of family vacation last year in Southern California where we stayed in a neighborhood (thanks VBRO).  That meant that we were able to do a number of neighborhood walks - up and down the blocks - looking at the houses and landscapes.  Both Nat and I were BOTH struck by the use of Rosemary in the landscape of some Southern California home gardens.  They were big, silver masses of leaves that put off that easy-to-identify smell of Rosemary.

Rosemary isn't something that will survive our Winters, so we've ONLY grown it as an annual herb in containers.  

But, at both the orange and green big box stores, I spotted something new (to me) in their Spring nursery inventory:  Bog Rosemary.  The silver foliage certainly resembles that more traditional herb variety.  But, the containers that were in-stock were showing purple flower blooms.  See below for some looks at Bog Rosemary - specifically the Blue Ice variety:

The use of Rosemary in the parkway/hellstrip in Los Angeles has me thinking of trying Bog Rosemary in OUR parkway.  That hellstrip between the sidewalk and the street - that currently is JUST turf.

NC State Extension has a listing up for Bog Rosemary - and includes this note:

It does not do well in heat and humidity and locations south of Zone 6. Plants spread slowly by means of suckers to become a very ornamental plant.

Don't love that - that it doesn't do well in heat.  But, we're NOT south of Zone 6, so I suspect it will work. 

The Garden Corner calls it an 'unusual groundcover' - but, Garden Sanity has a post up about how if you don't plant it in a wet area, it won't work.  Hence the 'bog' name, I suppose.

Our hellstrip is a lot of things, but it isn't "always wet".