Do you know the "real" name for these wonderful cottage garden plants with a history older than Shakespeare? Gardeners today tend to call them pinks, clove pinks, carnations, cottage pinks, border carnations, maiden pinks, cheddar pinks, grass pinks, Scotch pinks, old laced pinks, lilac pinks and of course, Sweet Williams. By any name, dianthus are tops for garden performance!
Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) also sometimes called Bunch Pink, Poet's Pink, and Sweet-John is a biennial dianthus, one among the oldest of favorite garden flowers. Parkinson talked about it in the 1600's and we are still admiring it today. Thomas Jefferson grew it, and our grandmother's grandmother grew it, and so do we, to the point where non-gardeners usually recognize the plant even if they don't know its name.
Why all the fuss? Well, dianthus as a group are darn good garden flowers, for one thing. They look good in and out of bloom and they smell good, too.
Dianthus are hardy, undemanding easy-to-grow plants, happy in a sunny spot with neutral to sweet soil and good drainage (meaning never soggy). Most are perennials with superb hardiness ratings often including USDA zones 10 to 4! Problems? Not really. Excessive humidity may cause foliar damage and the crowns will rot if left wet during the winter; but that's about it for the garden-types. Set these plants in a sunny spot with good drainage and odds are in your favor they will thrive.
If you have some you especially like, it's easy to propagate more either by seed, tip cutting, layering, and sometimes division. The blooms are so fabulous it's no wonder some gardeners consider these a "collectible"!
All dianthus have lovely, long lasting blooms, usually in the reddish-pink to mixed pinks to pale pink to white range. The flowers may be streaked or spotted or eyed or frilled or fringed, single or semi-double or double. Some dianthus are taller and a bit lax in habit, some are wee tiny like a pincushion; others are green and grassy out of bloom, still others are immediately identifiable by their year-round mats of blue-green foliage, spreading like puddles to soften the hard edges of the garden and especially welcome in winter.
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