Coastal Joe-pye weed, is the most compact of the straight Eutrochium species in New England at 3-5′ tall. It also likely has the best salt tolerance and is the most versatile. It’s flowers can be pink to dark purple. I’ve always thought of Joe-pye weed as an overdog. It gets overlooked because of its height and grandeur! I personally can’t get enough of it. I have always used Eutrochium in my landscape, garden and meadow designs. It is long blooming but also is in full bloom in August when not much else is. It makes for an amazing herbaceous hedge, or for height in the back of the garden, it’s blooms last a long time and for the most part it is deer resistance. If the height really bothers you, give it an early season hard prune for a bushier, shorter plant. This perennial is a pollinator powerhouse attracting many(so many) butterflies, moths, bees and even hosts several insects. It has beautiful winter interest and creates quite the backdrop to an unpruned garden during our grey winters. Through oral accounts Joe-pye weed has been linked to a man from the 18th and 19th centuries named Joseph Shauquethqueat. He was a Mohican sachem (tribal leader), or in other accounts a medicine man, but perhaps he was both. The story goes, he was able to treat and stop the spread of typhoid fever somewhere in Massachusetts.