Not sure if this was aimed specifically at Campanula but...

I've grown both the Cornus & Gaultheria you mention. Not sure I should comment on the C. canadensis, since it was grown in my newbie days. To sum up my experience with it: I promptly killed it. Lol.

I've grown Gaultheria for several years now. The first few years it did fine, even putting out some berries. Then it went downhill with great rapidity. My guess would be the soil here is not acidic enough.

Wish I could comment on bluets...I've had it on my want list for years ;-)
CMK

CMK - the post is for anyone to comment on but I thought Campanula might be particularly interested in them because she seems to like to try lots of new things and, with her woodland now, she'd have lots of space to try these! Campanula - is your soil acidic there? CMK - my experience is pretty much the same as yours and I expect I'll be disappointed again but it's frustrating not to succeed with something that is supposed to be widespread in your region (e.g. the bunchberries) so I'll give them one last shot and then give up if they still don't succeed. I'd be particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has been successful with them in relatively neutral soil.

We have fine sandy loam that's quite acid and have an organic duff layer on top, and all these grow wild here. I am wondering if you create a bed on top of your native soil that has relatively deep composted organics if that might help you succeed. As far as I can tell, all of them are relatively shallowly rooted, so if there is a layer on top of the higher pH native soil that is humus-y that they might be happier.

The areas where I've tried growing the bunchberries in the past have a good layer of composted material, but still they fail... I suspect summer heat and drought are probably contributing to the failure equally as much as the pH issue. Our water is definitely on the alkaline side and we run out of rainwater often in the summer, so that limits the option of hand-watering. *sigh* doomed to failure I fear....

I grow Gaultheria procumens. I've been experimenting with native ground covers. I added that and Arctostaphylus in a border back in 2011 in about 6hrs of sun and dry conditions. The gaultheria is shaded more by surrounding plants in the middle of the border and the Arctostaphylus is along the edge. The Arctostaphylus has taken off and seems to like my conditions. The Gaultheria has been slower, but last year when I checked it, I saw that it had finally started spreading, which I was very happy with. I plan on buying more of both of them as I am trying to create more low maintenance where I can. They both are very pretty.

I have loamy clay soil that had a PH of 6 the last time I checked it. I am going to check it again this year, since it's been a few years.

I should probably check my soil pH too - but I'm not sure I really want to know (because it might definitively rule out things that I'd rather continue to hope might eventually decide to adapt....) :-)

What a wonderful post, Woody, and exactly why GW is so valuable. I have never grown any of these because my soil is essentially around the ph8 level.....but although I am very familiar with the first 2, I have never heard of Starflowers or bluets (and once again, I am feverishly interneting to find as much info as possible). There are many things to worry about in this globalised society..... availability of seeds is the most tempting....always some tension between the purely aesthetic and the long term ecological balance.
Judging by the vast numbers of cleavers in the woods (gallium asparine), I am counting on the success of a better behaved family member, gallium odorata (or Ladies Bedstraw)....as a white creeping understory plant..
I have (yet another) theory to test out to stay ahead of the weeds which goes along these lines: At the start of the spring, the ground is fairly bare so tiny plants such as snowdrops and other low growing spring ephemerals (I love this term which is rarely used in the UK) can compete on their own terms. Later, as the grasses and weeds start to emerge, I am looking towards plants which are around 1-2 feet tall - aqulegias, pulmonarias, meconops. As summer goes on, the weeds are taller and so must the competing perennials (campanulas, foxgloves) culminating in those tall late summer bloomers such as epilobiums, eupatoriums, asters...........so a sort of rising ground layer as the season progresses. Of course, I have these theories on a weekly basis but.........

So again, thank you, Woody for showing me the potential of native (US and Canadian) woodlanders which might well find a home in my woods.

Should say, it's very probably a good thing that my soil PH is high....or I would be helpless before the vast array of amazing rhodies, especially the tall species....and those with felted integument under the leaves....and all those cinnabarinum types.........Oh dear - the flowers of my youth when I lived in the acidic and chilly north ( although camellias have never much appealed).

Campanula - if your soil is pH 8, bluets and starflowers aren't going to work. I love them both - where I grew up there would come a morning in May each year when bluets would make the rocky hilltop south of the house look like there had been a snowfall overnight! But that was on acid ground... They'd be sure to fail here :-( What does well here are trilliums, especially the white grandiflorums although the red erectums do well too - if you are looking for a nice spring ephemeral, try to find a source of those. Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) is a larger ephemeral that does well for me too - both trilliums and the bluebells are usually reported as prefering neutral to weakly acid soil so I'm guessing mine must be around 7, so I'm not sure how they'd do for you. The bluebells seed around a lot so it should be easy to get seed for you to try them out. Trilliums are one of those hard-to-propagate plants so would be riskier to try. Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is considered an acid-lover but grows for me under the pines - if you have some coniferous evergreens, it might be worth trying bloodroot near them.

I wasn't particularly thinking of trying bluets or starflowers in the woods, but because I still manage a few customers gardens, I am always interested in hearing about new plants, even if I cannot have them myself. I do have mertensia seedlings just coming up right now and am intending to embark on a primula orgy.

I have enjoyed seeing your garden, Woody, especially the series of pics taken across a season.

Campanula - If you have customers with suitable soil, bluets are very magical plants when they flower so are well worth trying if you can find the seeds or plants. Growing on or around rocky ledges is their natural habitat where I come from, if that helps you place them. The starflowers at 'home' grew in mossy places under or near conifers. There were usually bunchberries growing near the starflowers but the not with the bluets as those were in rock outcrops in old pastures. Are bunchberries grown in the UK? What about Partridgberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L. var. minus Lodd)?

This post was edited by woodyoak on Tue, Mar 4, 14 at 18:03

Cornus canadensis (I have never heard the name bunchberries) are a fairly common groundcover in the UK (although they often come with a warning regarding their spreading potential).....particularly in those famous Scottish and Cornish rhododendrum gardens. I do love dogwoods but have only really grown many of the shrubby c.sibirica types (for basket making, more often than not). I have a couple of flowering dogwoods in pots, hopefully forming a nice root system (hardwood cuttings).
Again, partridge berries are a feature of my youth (along with bilberries and various acidic low growing plants).....but here, in the alkaline soil of Cambridge and Norfolk, we have to settle for the rubus and ribes families. I have grown blueberries but gave up because the effort of keeping separate pots of ericaceous soil fully irrigated was hardly worth the fuss when blackcurrants and redcurrants grow like weeds. I might be tempted to try again, connecting one of the water butts to blueberry tubs because they are an expensive fruit to buy in the UK and freeze well (for muffins, of course).

I would love to grow red currants here - but they are an alternate host for White Pine Blister Rust and are not recommended for planting within 300' of white pines. I don't want to endanger our pines so don't plant currants - a neighbour up the street has them and lets us harvest theirs.

It occurred to me that this spring I should send DH with his camera up onto the (limestone) Niagara Escarpment to see what's flowering up there. Those things would likely have a good chance of doing well here, although I think our soil is probably closer to neutral - I did some Googling and found a report that says most home garden soils in the area influenced by the Escarpment have a pH 6.5-7.3 so we probably fall into that range.

Campanula - perhaps you'd be interested in the information in the attached link. Maybe some of those might grow for you and give you something new to try :-) I'm going to go through it for ideas for here....

Here is a link that might be useful: Niagara Escarpment wildflowers

Compost seems to kill cornus, and to a lesser degree, gaultheria. In the wild, both seem to grow on granite with a very thin layer of peat moss.
When I grow them in pots, I am very careful about the amount of compost I use in my soil mix, mixing instead, large amounts of peat.