I like your veggie pots along the driveway... clever as the heat on the driveway surface must help them. Lovely clematis... mine were hurt this year, maybe by wilt... maybe by winds along our river. Hard to tell. Like you, we now have spaces to fill. Hmmmm.... really admire that 'Piilu' clematis!

Molie

Thanks for the tour of you front garden. Always fun! I really do think you have the best Heptacodium anywhere. Do you prune it regularly, or does it just do its thing? Sorry to hear about the wisteria buds. I have one of the native wisterias. It took quite a hit but is still putting out a handful of blooms.
Sigh......I ordered paprika and they sent me a cherry color. Sent me a replacement.....cherry again. I didn't bother asking for a third try! LOL! My plan was to put them with barberry, and seeing it with you ninebark makes me want to seek out this rose and get that color combo going. That really is a pleasing.
Beautiful pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the pictures, I always love a good garden tour. The rodgersia sure does have big blooms, I never knew they could be that showy!
It's impressive that you can leave open spots for your mums, my lack of garden planning always has me tucking stray divisions and seedlings into any spot that looks even remotely empty.
That rose and nine ark combo really is nice, so many colors go well with that foliage.

I love that ninebark combo with the yellow flowers. Those rodgersia look great -- is that a full sun area or did you snap the pic during the sunny part of part sun?

"The front garden is one of those places that 'will look better next week/month/year'! We like most parts of it but it never quite pleases us as a whole in the way that the backyard does. At this point in our lives we are not likely to make big changes - even if I could figure out what they would be! So we'll keep making 'changes at the margin'.... "

I can relate to that sentiment. That's pretty much how I feel about my backyard. I can't get it right.

But your front yard looks like an interesting garden to me. I would love to be able to stroll through it. Thanks for the tour.

I love your "Polymorpha" 'woody'. They are so nice right now.

Your Rodgersias are spectacular. The front garden looks like a place I could get lost in for quite a while, taking note of all the plants tucked in.

mollie - some of my clematises were damaged by this past winter too. I've actually lost a Sweet Autumn completely - I thought those things were impossible to kill! My C. montana was killed to the ground but is coming back from the roots. Since that one is only marginally hardy here, I do expect that one to suffer after bad winters. The rest seem to have done OK.

thyme - the heptacodium is certainly a favorite of ours too because of it being such a butterfly magnet in September. It's an odd-looking tree here though since it grows against the big old cedar. If you look at the picture from the road, you can see that the tree looks like half a tree! The north side is missing - it can't grow on that side because of the cedar. But, if you look at it through the iron arbour, it fills the back, right side of the bed and looks like a normal tree! That is our main view of it so the odd half-a-tree side view doesn't bother us much. PLUS when the monarch butterflies arrive on migration in the fall, they like to roost in the cedar at night and come out in the morning to feed on the heptacodium flowers. So it works for them too.... I bought the tree as a relatively small shrub 10 or more years ago and pruned off all but one stem. Other than pruning off any winterkilled tips, and any branches hanging too low over the side path, we don't prune it now. This spring I bought a 'Blue Moon' native wisteria for a friend who wanted a wisteria. It had a flowerbud when I bought it. I held onto the plant until the flower bloomed so I could check the scent. Some of the natives have a reputation of being 'stinky', but I can confirm that 'Blue Moon' is pleasant.... If I had room for another wisteria I'd be tempted to try that one to see how it compares in growth - but we really don't need another one! I suspect my 'Paprika' rose now includes some seedlings that are likely crosses with the pink Angel roses at the other end of the bed! The color of the Paprika flowers is highly variable so I suspect there's mixing going on. I also have a 'Peachy Cream' Oso Easy rose between the pink Angels and the Paprika. The Peachy Cream is a much weaker plant though and barely made it through this past winter. The ninebark does make a great foil for brighter plants. There are red and rusty orange daylilies near it too that also look great with it.

kato, mxk3, a2zmom - rodgersias do have lovely flowers but the ones in the porch bed show them off the best - because the flowers arch over the driveway, they don't get lost against other plants as they do elsewhere in the garden. That bed faces east so gets full sun from sunrise to about noon and then is in full shade from the house for the rest of the day. I didn't have a lot of hope that they'd do well there - the soil is unamended clay with generous amounts of builders rubble and foundation drainage gravel mixed in; it is also under the roof overhang so it can get pretty dry under there when we forget to water.... There's only about 12" of space between the base of the porch and the edge of the driveway. Not exactly ideal growing conditions for any plant let alone a rodgersia :-) I've always felt that rodgersias are more adaptable than their 'idea' growing conditions would lead one to believe. These ones are the proof of it!

I'm not usually good at leaving holes in the beds for adding plants later - something usually finds its way into them... - but I do want some of those Mammoth mums and it looks like I need to be patient. I think I know who the wholesale supplier of the mums is for garden center that ordered them for me, so I may call them directly to see if I can talk them in to selling me some early if I go pick them up.

north53 - looking at your zone... what interesting very cold-hardy stuff do you grow? It looks like U of Sask. is producing some very interesting hardy stuff - where do you look for hardy material?

Rouge - Persicaria polymorpha is certainly an interesting plant, one I use in both the front and back gardens. The flowering decreases as the shade increases but I still like them and find them useful. Here is the one in not-too-dense shade in the patio area this morning:
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The Fringetree on the left of it is just starting to bloom and the Cornus kousa 'Milky Way' on the right will be blooming soon.

And this P. polymorpha is in fairly dense shade under the edge of the pine canopy so will only produce a few flowers but I like its shrubby green bulk there:
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I've actually lost a Sweet Autumn completely - I thought those things were impossible to kill!

Funny you mention this 'woody' as our normally very vigorous SAC must have really taken it on the chin from this hard winter as it is very far behind in terms of growth...it barely survived.

This post was edited by rouge21 on Wed, Jun 25, 14 at 12:05

Wish I could see your pics, but nothing is coming up. Can you re-post them?

bellarosa - Too many pictures to re-post them all....! Is anyone else having problems seeing them?

I can see them all just fine.

Martha