wieslaw your shot of "Helenium Rauchtopaz" looks more like a painting than a photograph...an amazing shot.

I must get my hands on Aconitum paniculatum. Yours is gorgeous! How long would you say it blooms? And how does the foliage look once it is done?

That is a very cool Helenium.

All I can say is WOW!

oh man.. you hurt my head..

at first glance.. i saw no line between pix 2 and 3 ... and i thought.. my God man.. how much fertilizer do you use. .. lol ... it looked like they were growing right out of the top of the greenhouse.. and getting ready to crush the house ... [and i swear.. i am sober.. lol] ...

i hope you have bee hives.. as you are surely a worker bee yourself ...

absolutely amazing..

ken

Lovely job. Full-time, I suspect.

Like the closeness of the plants.

I find perennial beds go through maybe a five year cycle, being at their best maybe in the third year (if you know what to not plant in the first place).
Some perennials can be left alone for years, but many need a lot of attention. For instance, I'd say some of the heleniums get shorter and shorter and just petty away, without being broken up and replanted every couple of years.

My spring plants get shaded, through much of the growing season. We have a nice long fall here, so we need space for various asters, fall monkshood, etc..

I need to initially plant close, so a garden immediately looks good.
After that, I've fallen into renovating different parts of the same perennial bed/garden, from year to year.

Do you have any additional advice on the overall strategy of keeping a beautiful perennial garden, looking beautiful, from year to year?

And that Phlox 'Eden's Smile' -- another wow.

wieslaw can you provide a few more detail of this particular 'Helenium' we all seem to like?

- height and width?
- start and duration of flowering?

wieslaw59 ... just beautiful! What aster is forefront in your very first photo?

Phlox 'Eden's Smile' is truly unique and Isee I must get back to growing some good selections of Helenium!

Karolina, it blooms for a very long time, as the side branches are countless, and they also have additional branches. The plant is absolutely gorgeous(no vices), the foliage looks clean as a whistle(except that the lowest leaves can dry up if too dry), telephone pole stalks are totally storm proof. It is extremely rare here in Europe, I localized it in a nursery in England(I bought it with a synonymous name A.variegatum subsp. paniculatum). Breathtaking! In my top 10 of 'can't live without'

Ken, the big bed perpendicular to the chicken house and the bed along the greenhouse/fence are practically maintanance free as there is no bare ground. The round bed in the middle (not shown yet) is younger and needs some weeding(but nothing worth mentioning), as well as the bed along the hedge from the west. All I do is removing spent inflorescenses from time to time. I have a lot of bumble bees, they build their nests in my bird houses for wrens.

Sunny Borders, I divide my Heleniums if they grow too big, especially Flammenrad grows very quickly. Some others are slower. Helianthus' need size reduction each third year, especially Lemon Queen. Otherwise, in the course of years, I just kept removing what was not working, and replacing it with something else. I do not consider any colour schemes, as I'm forced to plant where there is a vacant spot. Phloxes need more carefull placement, as they will come back from the roots for years if moved. Avoid floppers and plants with a running habit.

Rouge, according to the link below, it should start in the end of July , but not with me. It starts in the first decade of August here. It is around 150 cm tall with me. The foliage is much better than on other varieties, broader and cleaner.
If you click on the thumblink on the right, you can see the relative size compared to other plants, there is a Phlox Miss Holland just in front of it.

Here are some more shots:

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I surrounded my beds with chicken wire, because I have some chicks running free in my garden. They love to peck hostas to death.

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Orienpets:
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Helenium Rotkappchen
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Helenium Flammenrad

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Aconitum henryi:
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Phlox Boguslaw's Blaue and Heinz Hagemann. Boguslaw's Blaue is NOT blue, but pure violet with pink ting. Only in the night it has blue tinge. The best in this colour, healthy foliage here.

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Veronicastrum virginicum Pink Glow(provided it is true)
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My own oriental lily, very longlived(at least 10 years old), but no new bulblets.

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Here is a link that might be useful: Helenium Rauchtopas

Thanks for the info, wieslaw59, and for the great pictures.

You sound a lot like me. It's a juggling act!

I tend to find the more expensive cultivars are less the runners (and seeders). As someone said, it's cheap to produce runners and seeders.

Appreciate the flopping business. I have to do a lot of staking.

I take your comment on colour coordination (or the futility of it), in a real perennial garden, as spoken like a true perennial gardener.
Although it's possible to emphasize plants with a particular colour range, or to keep adding plants of a particular colour, you need to go with what you find works (and what is available).

I probably use all, or almost all, the plants you do (if not the same cultivars), except for oriental lilies. We have lily beetles, so oriental/asiatic lilies, fritillaria and toad lilies are just not worth growing here.

Sunnyborders, interesting is your comment re "Toad Lilies". This past season my few asiaitic lilies were eaten alive by the beetles but the close proximity "Toad Lilies" have been untouched and according to the "Ontario Rock Garden and Hardy Plant Society" that although Tricyrtis are lilies they are not bothered by the lily beetle.

Here is a link that might be useful: Toad lily

wieslaw wrote: I do not consider any colour schemes, as I'm forced to plant where there is a vacant spot.

This sounds so like me (probably like many of us). I get the shakes when I see unplanted space ;). And for whatever reason when I remove a plant from a location I toss and turn wondering what I can replace it with.

I do try to be organized and colour conscious for the border of any garden but inside it is colourful chaos. But even then I do try to plan by the mantra of "lots of colour *all* season long"

Think "colourful chaos" is something I could definitely live with.
Above all, I garden for colour.

I'm with both of you on empty space (Aristotle: "nature abhors a vacuum"?).

As said, I've read that lily beetles breed on (and eat the leaves of) oriental/asiatic lilies and fritillaria: also that they don't breed on, but do eat toad lily leaves).

This happened for certain in our own garden (none of the black excrement with larva in it, but the holes in the leaves). We had the lilies for years before the several toad lilies were planted next to them. I've not used toad lilies in any other gardens.

twrosz, it is Kalimeris incisa, should be Madiva, but I'm not 100% sure what variety they sent to me. It is bluer than the pictures on Google.

Have used Kalimeris, especially, K. incisa 'Blue Star'.

Very easy to pull up, but too much of a runner for me.

Spectacular! Thanks very much for sharing.
Is that Ligularia I see planted amongst sun perennials? It looks very healthy. Does it get much (if any) shade? What is your high temp in the summer and average rainfall? Do you have luck with other shade/moisture-loving plants in sunnier spots?

How many plants would you estimate is in that impressive stand of 'Kalimeris'?

Road trip! I think we all need to head to Denmark this time next year! :)

I don't know where to start. You have one amazingly spectacular garden there. Keep the photos coming-your plant combinations are wonderful.

Returning to what wieslaw59 said about not considering colour schemes in maintaining perennial beds:

I don't know if it's the same with the initial plantings, but the comment is enlightening. In perennial gardening one needs to do what works for more fundamental reasons than that of colour schemes.

Personally, I'm a huge lover of garden colour.

To me it seems that if there's a large enough area of different colours and a large variety of colours (and the colours are in blocks), someone looking at the bed will pick out colour schemes for themselves.

That's the case for me. I look at wieslaw's pictures and see very successful colour combinations which, in turn, I put down to the skill of the gardening and the gardener!

thyme2dig, the Ligularia Marie-Britt Crawford does not have much shade, but it is in a spot which receives a lot of water, (it's near the entrance to the chicken house, where I change water for the chickens , so it has enough).
I divided it into 5 pieces in November. Here at the beginning of blooming.
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I do not have much luck with shade plants in sunny spots, but this year was exceptional, because it has been raining for the most part of the summer. This year was good for the majority of plants, except Peonies and Asiatic lilies(bortrytis problems). I removed a big tree under which some hostas were growing, and some of them scorched badly.

Here is something strange. Here I have a space where I sow my seeds. I sowed Veratrum album, but 1 of the plants is obviously not V.album. It is not even V.nigrum, it looks like both at the same time(branching from album and color from nigrum.

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All Aconitums looked gorgeous this summer. Not a trace of mildew.

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Orientpets were gorgeous too

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All types of Helianthus are taller this year, they obviously like water.
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Balance , the best Monarda(branches galore, no mildew)
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Some daylilies open well after rainy night

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My heritage Hydrangea, very hardy here and blooming on both old and new wood

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Oriental lily seedling

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Rouge , there are two divisions of Kalimeris on that picture. They just branch very well.

Interesting on the Ligularia. I love 'Britt Marie Crawford'. Reseeds readily so I can give lots away to friends.

I noticed your plants appeared to be pristine with no mildew. I was in Europe in July and all the locals were commenting on how it had rained for months. As you say you had a lot of rain as well, I would have expected to see mildew. We've had our fair share of rain this year and I don't think I've ever seen so much mildew in my garden.

I was at Floriade this year in The Netherlands and your first pictures remind me of their large borders with sweeps of colorful perennials. You really have done an amazing job with your gardens.

Better watch out, Copenhagen is way up on my list of places to visit (more than likely a trip in 2014), so if you're anywhere near there, I just might show up on your doorstep! LOL!!

W-O-W!!! Knock your socks off gorgeous!! :0)

Re mildew:

Think mildew generally is the result of plants being weakened by stress, and not just associated with excessive rain. As was suggested to me, maybe combinations of stressing factors are typically involved, such as too dry, followed by too wet.

I do, however, pay attention to cutting perennials back, through the growing season, in part to let light, rain and air down.

On the other hand, I've never been able to avoid mildew ultimately appearing on the Monarda. I use mostly the supposedly more mildew resistant 'Gardenview Scarlet', always in full sun.

Wieslaw.........thank you for sharing your beautiful gardens.......they are sooooo gorgeous......i just wanna
reach out and pick some for some cool arrangements!
Carol

Looks fantastic and lush, I love the oranges in there and wouldn't normally use them myself. Might have to rethink that! Thanks for posting

rouge21: Toad Lilies are not members of the Lilium genus, perhaps why the beetle did not bother them...but it appears SunnyBorders had a different experience so who knows.

As Rouge says they're not in the same botanical genus, perhaps related to the fact that they don't (it may be, usually don't) lay eggs on member of Genus Tricyrtis.
But they are in the same botanical family.

There are reports, in the literature, of them feeding on other members of the Family Liliaceae, besides on Lilium and Fritillaria.

Yes, but the survivability of the beetles feeding on other genera is rather low. Just hang some bird houses for house sparrows, they learn very quickly to eat the larvae. I do not even bother to check too often. There is no reason to avoid lilies just because of some beetles. The houses for the sparrows must hang rather high, like at least 2,5 m. They will not nest in houses hanging lower.

Very interesting, Wieslaw59, to talk to gardeners from different parts of North America and Europe. We all talk the same language (the language of gardening at least!) and we all have similar challenges. Still some of the differences in details are fascinating.

House sparrows were introduced into North America in the mid 19th century (that is they're not native birds). I'm just noting the current hostility of the North American bird loving community to European house sparrows (they've got a name for being quite homicidal to native birds!).

I remember them from southern England, when I lived there. Apparently, there's still lots of them in the City of Toronto, a bit south of here, but where we live, I've never seen one.

If they did here, what they do for you (lily beetle wise), I'd be the first to speak up for them!

Sunnyborders wrote: Apparently, there's still lots of them in the City of Toronto, a bit south of here,

So Sunny given Toronto is basically a zone 6 are you a 5b or 5a or 5?

5A, Rouge:
that is Canadian Plant Hardiness zones, as your values indicate.

Used to work in Thornhill, immediately north of Toronto.
The snow often stopped, as you drove south, at bottom of the (Oak Ridges) Moraine.
Arrived at work with snow on the roof of the car.

At least the Torontonians had to admit that we really may have been delayed by snow!

Always so pretty!! Do your neighbors like your gardens? I hope so!

(and, do you ever see snakes in your flowers?)

Mind blowing! As a new gardener, this seems like a far away dream. I have lots of empty spaces with small plants. I'm looking forward to see how these puppies grow!

Bumblebeez, I'm not that lucky to have neighbours who are interested in gardening. I'm surrounded by 8 neighbours, of which 5 have nothing other than lawns and hedges(of those 4 have giant lawns , it takes a lot of time to mow them, usually when I'm trying to sleep). The neighbors across the street have moved and the house was bought by their grandson who works in Norway, so he's never home. The ones from the south-west are behind a very tall hedge, so they cannot see anything. The last one can see my garden, and the woman has bought some plants from me. But there are some passers-by who stop and watch from the street.

I loved the pics! So beautiful!