White Gaura Adds Delicate Beauty to the Pollinator Garden
A whimsical native perennial
White gaura is a perennial plant that grows as a billowy mass of slender stems topped with delicate white or pink flowers. Easy to grow, this North American native plant attracts butterflies and bees. Its origins in the Deep South make it highly tolerant of heat and humidity.
There are many cultivars of butterfly gaura available to gardeners, with flowers bearing various degrees of pink shading and some with a more compact growth habit. It works beautifully as a filler in the garden or in a patio container. It has a long bloom time and a fine, almost grassy visual texture. Because the foliage is concentrated at the base of the plant, and the flowers rise above it on skinny stems, white gaura is an option for a windblown spot and it works as a "see-through plant," giving glimpses of what grows behind it as it waves in the breeze.
Common name: White gaura, butterfly gaura, Lindheim's gaura, Lindheim's beeblossom
Botanical name: Oenothera lindheimeri (formerly Gaura lindheimeri)
Exposure: Full sun to part shade
Flowers: White or pink flowers begin to appear in spring and can continue into early autumn. Each flower has four broad petals surrounding long, thin stamens. Their structure makes them resemble butterflies. The flowers rise up on tall, wiry stems above the mass of foliage. The flowers open in the morning, and just a few at a time. However, the pink buds of flowers yet-to-open add further interest.
Related: If you like white gaura, you may like culver's root (Veronicastrum virginicum) too. Read about it here.
Foliage: Narrow leaves cling to thin stems, with the foliage most dense toward the base of the plant. The leaves are dark green until fall, when they turn shades of red or yellow.
Habit: White gaura is an herbaceous perennial that grows three to five feet tall and about half as wide.
Related: Planning a pollinator garden? Browse our articles on Beneficial Wildlife.
Origin: White gaura, or Oenothera lindheimeri, is native to Louisiana and Texas, as well as Mexico. Its natural habitat includes prairies, pinelands and the edges of ponds.
How to grow it: Plant white gaura in full sun or part shade and well-drained soil. This perennial grows and flowers best in poor soil; with a nutrient-rich soil it can become overly leafy, leggy and in need of support, such as from a cage. Gaura prefers an evenly moist soil, although once established it can persist through some drought, thanks to its taproot. High temperatures and humidity are not a problem for this plant, and it is winter hardy to USDA Zone 5.
White gaura can self-seed throughout the garden. To reduce this, the spent flower stalks can be removed at the end of the growing season.
Image credit: Matt Lavin/CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED
