Great Expectations hosta and Frances Williams hostas. I told them out back that I am shovel pruning them next spring. Let's see if that helps! Not!

Last spring I planted Homestead Verbena along with some pink roses. They bloomed beautifully all summer and all winter into early spring. By April Verbena was HUGE and taking over the roses. Cut the Verbena back dramatically, they came back very nicely (see photo) but quickly got all brown in the center and only kept the green and flowers at the edges of the plant. Not sure if I did the wrong thing in cutting back (which would mean I planted them in the wrong place since they really got too big for the roses) or this is what they do after the first season or what.

Ideas from anyone would be appreciated. Please do not bash a newbie gardener for planting the wrong plant in the wrong place! I know I will be taking them out but should I move them or is the browning thing what they do ? In which case I will not bother to transplant them.

Angelonia won't get a reinvite. One plant grew and bloomed nicely; the rest were disappointing. They were planted near each other, in two sections, with like conditions. At $3.80 per 3" pot, and my never falling love with the flowers, no encores for them.

New Zealand Flax 'Pink Panther' is on probation. I love the color, but the leaves are so wimpy and floppy. It needs to begin standing up for itself, or I will be bunching support plants around it. Or replace it with a different flax.

CMK I am also a little disappointed in helenium tie dye. I too was expecting deeper colors. There is some pink in these.

-gumneck, glad to hear I am not alone. I'm not sorry I bought it, just wish the sellers/hybridizers would have given an ACCURATE description and not tried to sensationalize it! Throws a monkey-wrench into things when they do, lol.
CMK

After seeing coneflower "rocky top" in a public garden a number of years ago I planned a bed with lots of it. In the public garden it was such a bright, bold color and I loved the way the flowers faced the sun. For the past few years in my garden it has been faded and floppy. I'm so bummed about it. I can't even think of where else I want to plant it, so it might just get shovel pruned.

I had purchased some orange phlox that wound up being a very dark pink so I made lemonade with the incorrect plants and moved them into the bed for more pop. Here's a pic with both plants and you can see the difference with the pop of color from the phlox. Still sad about the coneflower.

{{gwi:262366}}

My biggest dissapoimtment is any Brunnera I've tried to grow. They just can't take the heat in the summer.

Also a dud is Amsonia hubrichtii - A big weed that never turns yellow like people claimed it would.

My yellow dinner plate dahlia. It was huge and loaded with buds. I got 2 gorgeous blooms. And then the stem snapped. Even though it was staked...it snapped. Guess I'll stick with the smaller variety.

I didn't buy that much this year and most of what I did buy still needs to bulk up, but here are my disappointments:

Lavender 'Hidecote'. A friend gave me two starts, but with the torrential rain we've been having just about every week, they're not looking too good. I'm hoping they make it through the summer.

Tagetes patula âÂÂSparky - I must be the only person in the universe to plant three marigold plants and have no flowers. Not even a single bud.

Oenothera fruticosa (primrose) - another plant that has done absolutely nothing since being planted.

Echinaceamaniac I am with you on the Amsonia hubrichtii. I have it and have been looking forward to that golden glow its supposed to turn to in the fall only to see nothing but dirty brown leaves. The pretty light blue flowers in spring are nice but for the summer its just green and nothing special.

Update: I stand corrected. I looked back over my old plant orders and I do not have amsonia hubrichtii. I have Amsonia Tabernaemontana. I ordered 2 online in 2011 and both are growing very well. I guess I misordered though this one is supposed to turn yellowish in fall but never has for me.

This post was edited by gumneck on Sun, Aug 18, 13 at 21:14

Hopefully we will have a thread extolling the perennials that we were impressed with.

I think it is good also to hear which cultivars have done well. My disappointments this year have mostly been with things I started from seed that weren't the best examples of their species. I had a seed grown Coreopsis that was so big and rasty-nasty, always laying around and not even holding up its blooms so one could look at them. But what can I expect from a cheap pack of seed that is just labeled "Coreopsis"? There was a red yarrow like that, too. When I can hear of a certain cultivar that does well, is hearty and floriferous, then that can point me in the right direction. Even if I hear from folks in a different zone or climate, that helps too. Maybe Amsonia just isn't happiest in zone 7? Or maybe it needs a wet fall, or maybe it needs a dry fall to be golden? Or a shorter season? The trees are better in the fall some years more than others. I finally scrabbled around in the dirt behind the nice red yarrow growing in the neighborhood that I had been admiring that caused me to get the red yarrow that I have, and I found a tag that told me it was "Strawberry Seduction". Now I am informed thanks to the neighbor who stuck her name tag in with the plant, and I can get the look I want instead of the Achillea floperama that was so disappointing to me.

Also, I usually think of bad plants in terms of what I didn't do right. Maybe I didn't do research and find out the best cultivar. Maybe I didn't plant it in the right place. Maybe it needs more or less humidity or moisture, or maybe the drainage, or pH is wrong. I expect some plants to be more exacting in their needs, but they all have conditions in which they do their best. I haven't planted any tall Phlox because all the tall Phlox around here I see is prone to yellowing and looks terrible. I wouldn't therefore say in this thread that tall Phlox is a bad plant. I just think of all those nice Phlox plants in the truck headed for western South Dakota greenhouses thinking "What did I do to deserve this?" The giant stack of Oriental lilies at the WalMart are in for a big nasty surprise as well.

Anything that is pushing the envelope for difference in size or color I expect to be more delicate. Anything grown outside of its best growing conditions will need extra help as well.

I've grown Amsonia hubrichtii for years. The yellow colour in fall is fabulous and lasts for months before snow decimates it. Definitely in my top 10. I grow a small handful of amsonia varieties and hubrichtii is my favourite.
Perhaps climate affects it.

I've grown Amsonia hubrichtii for years. The yellow colour in fall is fabulous and lasts for months before snow decimates it. Definitely in my top 10. I grow a small handful of amsonia varieties and hubrichtii is my favourite.
Perhaps climate affects it.

Amsonia hubrichtii is native to Arkansas which is practically the same Zone as me. I'm just one state over. I can be there in no time. It's not that the plant isn't happy or growing poorly or anything. It's just not that nice to look at. It's ugly except when it blooms. It's meant to be growing as a weed on the side of the road. The only thing that could make it good is the gold fall color which never comes.

I didn't plant anything new this year, so I'm still disappointed with the same things that disappointed me in previous years. Maybe next year I'll get to fixing some of that.

Not a perennial, but the Purple Gnome gomphrenas that I like to use as fillers were disappointing this year. Usually they get nice and bushy. This year many of them are about the same size they were in the market pack. Not sure what's up with that, although we did have a late freeze and a much wetter summer than usual so far.

TotallyConfused

Not a perennial, but Blue Chip BB. no blooms and just kinda weedy looking, even for a BB. And I have four of them! Pretty close to Velvet Buzz, which are doing well so I don't know that it's the location.

Delphinium Summer Mornings. Quite pretty...then it up and disappeared.

Butterfly weed. Short blooming season for some reason this time.

Red Birds In A Tree, although I hear it is hard to grow (bought on a whim). Mine protested everywhere possible and finally died. I just liked the name (my grandmother LOVED Cardinals.."red birds"..so I thought it was cute), and also it looked like a hummer type plant.

BTW...the disappointing plant doesn't have to be a new addition this year, it can be planted from a previous year ;-)

-eclecticcottage, don't feel bad about the RBIAT- it's him not you! LOL.

It is endemic to a pretty specific area in NM, so no wonder it is tricky to grow. I've tried it several times only to find it dies out/dwindles to almost nothingness after a few years. Not sure if it is usually short lived in it's natural environs or it simply doesn't like my climate. I've always assumed the latter...
CMK

Eclecticcottage, my butterfly weed has been one of my pleasant surprises this year. By this time last year, it had pretty died back, leaving big holes in my garden. I didn't have much hope for it returning this spring, but it did. It flowered beautifully and is even having some rebloom now. Hopefully yours will be better next year.

TotallyConfused

I've been really disappointed with a new agastache hybrid called 'Apricot Nectar'. The bloom didn't last very long and now it appears that I've lost most of the plant itself. It's in the right location, but I think it's just a wimp. I have other agastache that are doing just great. Too bad because the soft peach color was so promising! :(

I'm with several others being bummed about the echinacea plague this year.

Other plants that made me unhappy.

Echinacea 'Hot Summer'. If I wanted the standard pink flowers, I could have moved some of my 'Magnus' to this spot. 90% of the blooms on this plant have reverted back.

Monarda 'Raspberry Wine'.This was completely due to the horsemint catepillar destroying the blooms. I'm on a mission to combat this scourge!

Amsonia hubrichtii COLORS very nicely here. Mostly see it in part shade though. Perhaps that is part of it.

Arktrees

I am disappointed with a good number of my heuchera. So many that were beautiful last year came back smaller and they are not much to see this year. ....Not all of them, but too many.

Get good color on A. Hubrictii here. Mine tends to flop so I have to stake it a bit. If it didn't get color in fall, I would shovel prune it. It's one of the main reasons I planted it and does look rather weedy.

Tried RBIAT again from seed this year. Actually did get one to live and planted it. It is about 2 little stems and it's totally lost in the garden. Blooming and very pretty if I crawl on the ground to find it!

My blue chip BB always blooms much later and for a long time. Eclectic, do you see any buds? It actually seems even later this year.

I guess the only disappointment, but really a frustration centers around plants wrongly labeled as to height or really variable in height.

I have a dahlia that was suppose to be around 3 feet. Right now it's over 5 feet and still growing. My Rudbeckia 'Prairie Glow' seem to range in height from 3 - 5+ feet. Placement can be a bit tricky when you don't know in advance.

Kevin

Wrongly labeled as to name. A double Wisteria , after several years of waiting for the first bloom, turned out to be a single. This one will be hard to beat.

I have something more, not so much disappointing as rather astonishing. What I planted last year as double orange echinacea Marmelade, this year changed to..... SINGLE YELLOW !!! (the whole clump!). And it is planted next to a yellow-leaved hosta(it was the only vacant place at the time of planting), so the flowers are nearly invisible on that background.

Three kinds of plants.

I pulled out various Echinacea plants --- they were awful looking and maybe infected? Mulched them.

Dianthus 'Heart Attack' is looking like sad brown crisps now. I don't recall its dying back so soon last year, but maybe the extreme heat played a roll. I won't dig them up. Hopefully they'll return.

My Just Joey rose died --- I loved that rose! I know it's kind of 'iffy' so I guess I won't search for a replacement. RIP, Joey.

Just checking this thread to see if my wife posted my picture or not
~ blush ~

lol@Sammywillt's post.

Not a great fan of Ech Marmalade. Came out, kind of a dirty dull orange. And then disappeared into the great beyond this year.

My feelings about Helenium Tie Dye have changed. It has darkened up and is quite colorful, and I am liking it better. I only wish I had pinched it back some. Here are some recent photos.
photographed in the morning before the sun hits it:
{{gwi:262367}}
photographed in the afternoon when the sun hits it:
{{gwi:262368}}
{{gwi:262369}}

I have another one that is in a shadier spot all day and its more goldish orange, so will be moved.