Planting 3 Stachys 'Summer Crush' In Pizza Oven Bed - June 2026

#3 and #4 on my Summer to-do list for 2026 focused on adding plants to the Pizza Oven Bed that I created last year.  That meant finishing up a garden edit and adding some Hakonechloa Macra grasses to the front of the border.  And, adding some flowering perennials amongst the three existing Wichita Blue Spruce trees in the middle of the bed. 

Here is the post showing the blue junipers without much planted around them (in Winter).  And, here is a post showing the original inspiration for the blue juniper + stachys inspiration.  

When I came across this sign for Stachys 'Summer Crush' at Roy Diblik's Northwind Perennial Farm, I thought these would work well in this spot:

The description reads:

'Summer Crush' has a summer dispaly of wand-like inflorescenses with pink and white bi-color flowers that stand above dense, green foliage.  

I ended up buying only three of these because I've been using up the space in front of the blue Junipers with dahlias for this season.  

With a big, mass planting in mind, I started with the three over to one side, and sort-of intermixed with the junipers.  Here are some  planting photos below:

I'll see how these perform, then decided how many more I should buy to fill out the rest of the bed later this Summer/next year.  My 2026 to-do list item mentioned planting six, so I'm half-way there.