Eupatorium 'Baby Joe' is better known as the new small Joe Pye weed.
If you have grown the big Joe Pye weeds that are tall and spread a lot, you will love this smaller one, which doesn't fall over or take over. It is so much more suitable for small yards.
It is always such a relief to find that plant breeders have come up with a dwarf variety of a large or ungainly plant. I remember how happy I was to find a dwarf butterfly bush a few years ago.
I also give thanks for my dwarf flowering lilac, which flowers heavily each spring and re-blooms intermittently all summer and fall. A bonus is the butterflies that are attracted to it over a long time as a result of the re-blooming. Unlike old-fashioned lilacs, it also is never a chore to prune.
I also love the smaller, more compact Vitex Agnus-castus 'Delta Blues', which—though smaller—is as beautiful as the species. It is also fragrant, deer resistant and produces those characteristic blue summer blooms that hold well in bouquets.
Slow-growing as well as dwarf varieties of old favorites now make it easy to have lots of old-fashioned favorite flowers in even the smallest garden without all that hard work of pruning.
