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Description
purple dracaena spike Dense Blazing Star – Plant DetectivesDense Blazing Star (Liatris spicata) Dense Blazing Star brings bold vertical color to sunny gardens with fuzzy purple flower spikes that stand out from across the yard. The upright habit adds structure without heaviness, so it layers easily with grasses and mounding perennials. It is also a strong pollinator plant, keeping the garden active in midsummer when many borders hit their stride. If you want a perennial that looks clean in a designed bed and
Dense Blazing Star (Liatris spicata)
Dense Blazing Star brings bold vertical color to sunny gardens with fuzzy purple flower spikes that stand out from across the yard. The upright habit adds structure without heaviness, so it layers easily with grasses and mounding perennials. It is also a strong pollinator plant, keeping the garden active in midsummer when many borders hit their stride. If you want a perennial that looks clean in a designed bed and still feels naturalistic, this one fits beautifully.
Distinctive Features
This clump-forming perennial produces narrow, grass-like green foliage and dense, bottlebrush-style flower spikes in red-purple to purple tones. Bloom typically runs from July to August, with flowers opening along the spike for a long-lasting display and strong garden presence. The stems are upright and make excellent cut or dried flowers, adding texture to arrangements. Mature size is typically 2 to 4 feet tall and 9 to 18 inches wide.
Growing Conditions
- Sun: Full sun for the strongest stems and best flowering.
- Soil: Well-drained soil, and it tolerates a range of textures as long as drainage is good.
- Water: Medium, keep evenly moist during establishment, then water during extended dry spells.
- Zones: USDA Zones 3 to 8.
- Notable Traits: Attractive to butterflies and other pollinators, and deer resistance is often reported.
Ideal Uses
- Focal Point: Plant a bold drift as a focal point so the purple spikes create a clear vertical highlight in midsummer.
- Pollinator Borders: Use in sunny beds to support butterflies and add constant garden movement.
- Meadow Plantings: Blend with ornamental grasses for a naturalistic look with strong seasonal lift.
- Cut Flower Gardens: Grow in rows for sturdy stems that hold well fresh or dried.
Low Maintenance Care
- Watering: Water regularly the first season, then reduce watering once established to avoid overly soft growth.
- Staking: Stake only if needed in very windy sites or overly rich soils where stems may lean.
- Deadheading: Remove spent spikes if you want a tidier look and to limit self-seeding in favorable sites.
- Cleanup: Cut stems back in late winter or early spring before new growth begins.
Why Choose Dense Blazing Star?
- Vertical Summer Color: Purple flower spikes add height and definition when many borders need structure.
- Pollinator Value: Flowers are a strong nectar source that draws butterflies and other beneficial insects.
- Garden Versatility: Works in formal beds, naturalistic borders, and meadow-style plantings with equal ease.
- Manageable Size: Typically reaches 2 to 4 feet tall and 9 to 18 inches wide for easy placement and repeat use.
Dense Blazing Star looks best when repeated, letting the spikes create rhythm and a strong vertical thread through the planting. Pair it with grasses and late-blooming perennials to keep the border lively through the second half of summer. Give it sun and sharp drainage, then keep moisture steady during establishment for the best long-term performance. If you want clean vertical impact with real pollinator value, this plant delivers.
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4.3 ★★★★★
Based on 778 reviews
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★★★★★ 5
Excellent way to learn about a framework used by Andy Grove and Google. Specific examples and case studies are terrific!
Format: Hardcover
I couldn’t put this book down, so I read it in one sitting.
Many business books talk about the organizational brilliance of Andy Grove's Intel, Google, disruptive startups, and high-performing charities. This one actively teaches you how to mimic their organizational brilliance. The book distinguishes itself by providing clear examples of how OKRs help organizations achieve their full potential. Primary source documents, including internal memos, show how Intel CEO Andy Grove used OKRs to rapidly respond to competitive threats.
As an admirer of Google, I enjoyed learning how OKRs were used at key points in its history. When Google employed 25 people, CEO Larry Page set OKRs for every engineer. When Chrome sought to disrupt the browser market, OKRs enhanced the product team’s creativity. When YouTube sought to establish its own identity within Google, OKRs helped the team set appropriate business goals. It’s really nice that specific OKRs from Google’s history are included in the book.
Some people mistakenly believe that OKRs only work for Google, and the book provides clear examples of how OKRs were successfully implemented by startups, large corporations, and non-profit organizations. Entrepreneurs will enjoy learning how fitness, education, healthcare, and food delivery startups used OKRs to find new markets and manage their expanding headcount. Fans of corporate transformations will enjoy learning how OKRs led to human resources and technology process overhauls at some of the world's largest companies. Non-profit leaders will enjoy learning how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Bono used OKRs to impact millions.
All in all, I found the chapters to be short yet impactful, and arranged in a logical sequence. I particularly liked that as the book progresses, it provides clear examples of how to overcome the nuances of implementing OKRs. I felt my OKR-setting muscles getting stronger by the end of the book.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2018
★★★★★ 4
... Doerr began his career under the tutelage of the great Andy Grove
Author John Doerr began his career under the tutelage of the great Andy Grove, CEO of Intel, who transformed that company into the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductors. It was Andy Grove who turned a simple method “OKRs”, into a devastatingly effective business tool which became the lifeblood of Intel.
In 1978, Intel had developed the first high-performance, 16-bit microprocessor, the 8086. Soon it was getting overtaken by Motorola’s 68000 which was easier to program. Using OKRs, Intel launched “Operation Crush” to deal with this threat. The results were fast, focused and effective. “When we smacked Motorola between the eyes,” Doerr writes, “A manager there told me, ‘I couldn’t get a plane ticket from Chicago to Arizona approved in the time you took to launch your campaign.’”
Doerr left Intel to join the venture capital firm at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and became an early investor in Google. There he managed to entrench Andy Grove’s business tool to great effect and it is acknowledged as a key contributor to Google’s success. The results have made Doerr the 105th richest man in the US. This book describes how to use this tool.
John Doerr is the current evangelist for OKRs, OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. As a strategist, I know the importance of knowing where you are going or as Yogi Berra pithily said: "If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” However, as Doerr writes, and as you and I know, “Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.”
OKRs are for executing. An “objective” is simply what is to be achieved, no more and no less. Key results benchmark and monitor how we get to the objective. The difference between ‘key results’ and ‘key performance indicators’ are very different. I may really be impressed that you performed well, but your efforts are only useful if you achieved the results I need.
Marissa Mayer would say of OKRs, “It’s not a key result unless it has a number.” With a number attached, OKRs are either met of not met. There is no grey area, no room for doubt. The time frame for an OKR can vary from a month to a quarter or more, but at the end of the period, they have either been met or they have not.
When the objective is clear and specific, it produces far better results than when it is vaguely worded. ‘Performance excellence,’ or ‘Customer satisfaction’ are very different when expressed as ‘98% error free’, or ‘delivered within 12 hours’.
Aside from Google and Intel, OKR adherents include IT firms such as AOL, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Oracle, Slack, Spotify, and Twitter. But adherents also include firms such as Anheuser-Busch, BMW, Disney, Exxon, and Samsung.
The simplicity of the design of OKRs hides the complexity of implementing the method. When the OKR is formulated, it will undergo iteration – this is inevitable. And this is not the problem. The problem is the commitment of the most senior managers to the discipline that is required.
Without the most senior managers' commitment this will fail, much as your previous systems have failed to produce the promised result. In a meta-analysis of seventy studies, high commitment to managing the company by objectives showed a productivity increase of 56%. Where that commitment was low, productivity increases were a mere 6%.
The problem with getting results is compounded when we are employing people to think. On an assembly line, it’s easy enough to distinguish output from activity. It gets trickier when employees are paid to think.
In a thinking environment, many of the benefits of OKRs are highlighted. A particular challenge for many in such an environment is separating the person from the activity. All too often, feedback becomes very personal leading many managers to avoid confronting non-performance. When the focus is on unequivocal results that can be tracked, then non-performance can move to an analytical discussion. After all, a performance management system is a tool, not a weapon.
The OKR is formulated as “We will achieve a certain objective as measured by the following key results. This begins at the highest appropriate level of the organization and then all below can align their OKRs to this meta-OKR.
When Bob Noyce and Andy Grove began the “Crush” project, the directive to Intel’s management level was simple and clear: “We’re going to win in 16-bit microprocessors. We’re committed to this.” This objective was given to the top one hundred people at the meeting. It was conveyed to the next level in 24 hours. Intel was close to a billion-dollar company at the time, and “it turned on a dime” - through a clear, aligned, objective and a clear required result.
The “Crush” project included top management, the entire sales force, four different marketing departments, and three geographic locations—all working together as one. It was proof of Andy Groves assertion that “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.”
Great companies are not great because they have a great idea, but because their execution is great. There are no exceptions. Those who do not have excellent execution are an accident waiting to happen. Using OKRs, a successful organization can focus on the handful of initiatives that can make a real difference and defer the less urgent ones.
The very act of formulating the objective makes communication with clarity possible. Focusing on results rather than activities allows people to adjust their activities to meet the results, rather than to slavishly following performance indicators, as the environment changes.
Consider this horrifying finding: In a survey of eleven thousand senior executives and managers, a majority couldn’t name their company’s top priorities!
“There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little,” Andy Grove noted. To address this issue will require commitment to making the OKR process effective, and this commitment should not be understated, which is why it has to start from the very top.
If you are a leader of your business your commitment should start with a reading of John Doerr’s book, and then share it with your colleagues.
My personal experience with the process is best summed up by actress Mae West’s famous statement: I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it.
Readability Light --+-- Serious
Insights High ---+- Low
Practical High +---- Low
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on strategy and implementation and is the author of the recently released ‘Executive Update.’
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Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2018
★★★★★ 5
An incredible book that will change your perspective on life.
Format: Paperback
For a long time, I have been reading the works of great poets such as Rumi and Hafez with little knowledge of other poets of the past. However, with confidence, I can say that Kalil Gibran fits into the group of the greatest poets of all time for his wonderous style of writing that invites you into his literary magic. This book guides you along lessons that cover every aspect of life- marriage, children, friendship, etc. The lessons in this book will change your view on life's greatest challenges. Even after you finish the book, you can always come back and review a chapter that you would like to refresh on. Overall, this book is great for anyone who loves poetry and can decipher old English to uncover the beautiful message that Gibran offers to his readers.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2024
★★★★★ 5
Wisdom
Format: Paperback
Fantastic book, easy to read and accessible for all ages
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Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2026
★★★★★ 5
👍
Format: Paperback
Wonderful book
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Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2026