Award-winner is only 5 inches tall, but blooms with bright, yellow flowers all season
The right gear, routine stretches make a difference
The Garden Guy was looking at photos of last year’s trials, and I was struck by one of a Mecardonia. I have never written about this plant, and was thinking there is a great chance for my readers who do not know about how wonderful and tough as nails this flower is, particularly the award-winning variety GoldDust.
GoldDust, a Proven Winners selection, has won 67 awards, from north to south and east to west. It was a top performer at Penn State, the University of Georgia, Tennessee, Cornell, South Dakota State, Minnesota, Mississippi State, Oklahoma State — the list goes on for pages. This speaks volumes, mostly of what it will do in your landscape too.
At the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens in Savannah, we used it in our cottage garden around a rock stepping-stone path. It was a lot like a Caribbean cottage — we had gingers, plumbago, shrimp plants and tall garden phlox all pretty, but it was that patch of GoldDust mecardonia that seemed to illuminate the garden. It was also amazing because it bloomed from the time we planted it until late fall. Not that many plants will do that.
Mecardonia has the common name axil flower, and when I first started growing it was in the Scrophulariaceae family related to snapdragons and such. Well, that mysterious board of taxonomic nomenclature has moved it — and snaps, too — to the Plantaginaceae or plantain family. But alas they are still related.
Mecardonias are from South America on up through Central America and even into the warmer regions of the southeastern
United States. GoldDust, however, is a hybrid and a great one reaching only about 5 inches in height. Can you imagine a plant at that height that blooms with bright yellow flowers all growing season?
Remarkably it spreads outward 20 inches, allowing it to be unbeatable around stepping stones, small drifts of ground cover and, for sure, tumbling over the rims of baskets, boxes and containers like old-world olive jars. It is an easy-togrow plant, requiring no deadheading. Your main goals are to provide sun and moist fertile soil.
You will expect GoldDust to be an annual and, of course, one worth every penny spent. To get a nice informal drift or patch, plant three or four, spacing 12-16 inches apart. They are perennial in zones 10, and word on the street is they have surprised a few in colder zones with a spring return. Don’t count on it but celebrate if they do.
At the Young Plant Farms Flower Trials in Auburn last year, I saw a new application that was simply beautiful. They had combined Blue My Mind evolvulus with the GoldDust mecardonia, letting them intermingle. The icy blue and cheerful yellow created the perfect complementary partnership.
One of my favorite Proven Winners recipes and applications is a window box planting that pairs GoldDust mecardonia with Illusion Garden ornamental sweet potato and Superbena Peachy Keen verbena. It is a warm, elegant partnership but not glaring or gaudy.
The Garden Guy urges you to try it and by all means consider some blue combinations like Unplugged So Blue salvia or Superbena Dark Blue verbena.
PHILADELPHIA — A few months into the pandemic, Allen Conrad’s patients began complaining about increased pain in their neck and shoulders. Some struggled to turn their heads and experienced increased tension in their wrists. Conrad, owner of Montgomery County Chiropractor Center, immediately knew the cause.
“My patients are sitting at home, working at their kitchen table for hours on end,” he said. “One patient I have is doing his work on an ironing board because there’s just not enough room in his apartment for a desk, and that can definitely have a negative effect on the body.”
When offices closed and people with desk jobs transitioned to working at home last spring, creating an ergonomic workstation was not a priority as many expected to be back commuting within a few weeks. But as the one-year mark to the pandemic approaches, chiropractors and orthopedic surgeons say working from home has meant more pain for many.
“Almost from the jump with COVID, I’ve seen a big uptick in patients with neck, back, wrist, hand and shoulder problems,” said Jeremy Simon, chief of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Rothman Orthopaedic Institute. “It’s because they don’t have a normal workspace. People are often slouched in a chair during Zoom calls, especially when they’re using a tablet device, which means their head is bent. And they can end up stuck on the couch in that position for over an hour.”
Hunching over adds
pressure to the spine, he said, especially the intervertebral discs, which act as shock absorbers for the vertebrae. This increase in pressure can cause the discs to deteriorate faster. Looking at a device with your head in a flexed position can put up to 60 pounds of force on the discs in your neck, he said. And many people may be holding that position for hours on end.
“That’s why we suggest mimicking your work station at home if you can,” Simon said. “Things like sitting on a supportive chair can help maintain an inward curve in your back. Elevating your laptop can help keep your head in a more neutral position. And using a standing desk can
put less pressure on your discs than sitting.”
Hunching over a laptop screen can also put tension on your hips, said Rhonda Hazell, an assistant professor for anatomy and physiology in La Salle University’s biology department. Over time, the hips will lock up, which causes prolonged compression that affects the internal organs in the abdominal cavity, she said. When the intestines fold up, digestion slows down.
“Ideally we should be getting up every hour just to stand and stretch to allow for that circulation to move through our system,” Hazell said. “That’s when it’s a good time to get a drink of water or have lunch. If you can’t leave
the room, you can always do a spinal twist in your armchair or a downward dog to release tension from the shoulders.”
She stressed the importance of getting a chair that encourages proper posture with a back that supports the natural curvature of the spine, pointing out that sitting in an awkward position places abnormal tension on the hip flexor muscles.
“Ergonomic chairs make a huge difference,” Hazell said. “Chairs with bad backs and high hips can cause all kinds of musculoskeletal issues.”
Standing desks can also help relieve the burden on the body. If you don’t have enough space for one at home, Conrad recommends
getting a laptop stand that elevates screens so people aren’t hunching over. Looking downward constantly can cause non-traumatic whiplash, he said, which can lead to muscle tightening, headaches and back soreness. In the long run, poor posture can lead to degenerative spine and shoulder conditions, Conrad said.
“People need to find ways to observe what they’re doing wrong,” he said. “One way to do that is to have your significant other take a picture of you from the side, and then fix what’s wrong. Your back and your knees should be close to a 90-degree angle from the ground, and your shoulders and hips should be straight.”
During breaks, doing something as simple as a “rag doll fold,” which is when the upper body drops toward the feet, can be helpful, Hazell said. Regularly decompressing the spine and releasing the “stagnation from sitting” can make a difference in how people feel after sitting at a keyboard all day long, she said.
“A lot of people don’t realize how much your posture and your body mechanics can be affected by your desk and workspace,” Simon said. “We take that for granted. But it’s important from a preventative standpoint to keep those things in mind and do stretches, because otherwise it could become a chronic issue.”