General Culture:

Easily grown in moderately fertile, medium moisture, well-drained soil in full sun to light shade. Prefers moist, organically rich soils in full sun. Plants are intolerant of drought and need to be watered in dry spells. Plants need good air circulation to help combat potential powdery mildew problems. Avoid overhead watering. Plants appreciate a summer mulch which helps keep root zones cool. Remove faded flower panicles to prolong bloom period. If not deadheaded, plants will self-seed in optimum growing conditions. Can slowly spread over time by both slender rhizomes and self-seeding to form large colonies.

Noteworthy Characteristics:

Meadow phlox (also somewhat confusingly called wild sweet William) is native to eastern North America where it typically occurs in moist meadows, low woods and riverbanks. It is an upright, clump-forming, rhizomatous perennial which typically grows 2-3' tall. Sweetly-aromatic, tubular, 5-lobed, pinkish-purple flowers (to 1/2" across) with long corolla tubes are densely arranged in large, cylindrical, terminal clusters (panicles to 12" long) atop stiff, upright, red-spotted stems. Maculata means spotted in Latin. Plants seldom need staking. Flowers bloom in summer. Thin, opposite, finely-toothed, lance-shaped, dark green leaves (to 5" long). Good fresh cut flower. Attractive to butterflies, birds and hummingbirds. Phlox maculata ssp. pyramidalis is the form of this plant which is native to Missouri. Although ssp. pyramidalis reportedly has, inter alia, unscented flowers and more pyramidal-shaped flower panicles, it should be noted that Steyermark does not find the purported differences between the subspecies and the species to be significant.