13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
Over the years many different types of perennials have been grown in my mailbox bed near my clematis. All did well and were not affected by road salt, though my suburban street is seldom salted. These include penstemon, mums, gaillardia, geum, heuchera, salvia, sedum, and nepeta. There are probably others that I have forgotten. Last winter the snow removal person scalloped my mum so I moved that this spring and added annuals to its spot. Also due to winter kill there are no gaillardia anywhere in any of my beds this year.
The usual recommendation is to plant a perennial that does not have a deep tap root and that has the same watering needs as clematis which like to be moist. In other clematis areas I have polemonium, geranium, delphinium, and columbine with clematis.
TexasRanger - having seen your fantastic dry gardens I think your situation is about as different as it is possible to get from Balliol's. S/he is gardening in a climate with frequent rain and lush plant growth. Gravel soon becomes covered in leaves, dirt,twigs, moss, algae etc. It's a nightmare to maintain. The 80f s/he referred to counts as a heat wave here. There've been warnings on the BBC to take extra care! Today it's 70f where I live with 89% humidity and rain storms. Perfect weather for weeds to flourish....and they do.
However, having seen Balliol's personal situation the weed barrier and gravel might keep things tidy for a couple of years longer.
floral, From what I read, the gravel was already in place. The amount of gravel removal to re-work the area as you proposed is not always doable by all people and sometimes its more sane for people to try to work with what is already in place.
I do not live in a desert climate. Rainfall ranges in my own state vary from 17" to 54" annually depending on where you live. The greatest amount recorded was 84". Summer can be hot & dry but some years are wet & humid, such as this one. Winters are variable as well, some mild, some bitter. I deal with moss, leaves and debris on gravel, its a part of my maintenance. The problem depends on the surrounding foliage, # of trees etc. My lot used to be lush and green but I chose to remove it all down to the bare ground to plant a prairie. My biggest battle is finding plants that will survive patterns of rain + humidity but also stand up well when extended drought patterns set in. The weather here is very inconsistent and challenging since it swings from periods of draught to periods of wet.
The US is a very large country and its impossible for someone living in the UK to make general statements about conditions or garden practices since it varies extremely even within individual states and from one gardener to the next. Just about every climate condition exists here somewhere. By the way, my landscape is not indicative of the urban area where I live. Today it is 86 degrees, we had 3" of rain day before yesterday and it is quite humid & it has been wet all summer. I do a massive amount of weeding because it is rather lush here as well allowing imported plants to invade & grow a bit too well which is why the grasslands are rapidly being eaten up by imported trees and other plants.
This was my conventional landscape before I cleared it. Neat well dug beds & clean crisp borders.
Ugh, they totally defoliated my columbine so I thought I was safe - but now that the columbine has grown back, there is a new crop of baby critters on there, eating away at all the new leaves! I thought sawflies were just a once a year thing so maybe they aren't sawflies. I'll try the alcohol/dishsoap approach.
Every year, it's the same two plants affected the most in my garden...columbines with leafminers and sawfly...and roses with sawfly and leaf cutter bees. I pick off and destroy the sawflies I see but they've already done lots of damage and it looks really unsightly.
I stopped growing nasturtiums because they got chewed by cabbage worms, but not sure if I want to resort to digging up the perennials.
Bogturtle,
There are multiple national campaigns to increase the number and varieties of milkweeds growing. If you google Monarch conservation or preservation, or pollinator conservation, you'll find lots of activities going on. We had a great project here on GardenWeb to connect new milkweed growers with veterans who could share seed and growing information. I think it was "Adopt a Milkweed Newbie" or something close. This year we're already encouraging established gardeners to begin collecting seed from host plants and nectar plants in preparation for another seed-sharing effort to help expand and create as many butterfly-friendly gardens as possible. We even had some media involvement in a large Monarch release that one member of GardenWeb staged. Monarch Watch is an organization based at the University of Kansas that grows and sells/distributes milkweed seedlings across the country. They accept donations of money or milkweed seeds, and grow milkweeds from seeds collected from specific geographic regions to redistribute back to those same areas.
Anyway, there's lots going on and we all try to do our part both in our gardens and in education those around us.
Martha
Perovskia, Russian Sage is what I grow in my driest, sandy area. I'm not familiar with clay hardpan and how that impacts this suggestion, but they like sandy, rocky soil just fine. Nice, silvery foliage once it gets going and then purple flowers when it's hot and dry out there. Bees love it, too.
In my garden, blue salvia grows like a weed,( though my climate is very different;I'm here in Tuscany...) I'd also think that stuff like gypsophilia (baby's breath),aquileigia (colombine)...any of those tap-rooted things would do well.Also, the aromatics, but there again, not sure about cold-hardiness...bart
I sometimes wonder if the "rattiness" of post-bloom daylily foliage is related to zones or humidity or some other climate issue. In my neck of the woods, the only way to tolerate daylilies is to cut the foliage to the ground after the plant has bloomed. The new leaves will look young and healthy. Then, I often have to do it a second time in late summer. Oakes Daylilies, one of the foremost growers, is just about 30 min from me and a visit to their open house in early summer will take your breath away. But, I promise you, by this time of the year, its just an acreage of ratty leaves.
I've never seen a "ratty" looking day-lily. Maybe a picture of what qualifies as "ratty" in the opinion of those who perceive rattiness in their day-lilies might be useful to the rest of us?
I love day-lilies. Perhaps the varieties I have grown were older or something, but to me, day-lilies do have a distinctive and pleasant scent. Just walking out of a city building the other day, I suddenly started swiveling my head around and sniffing to track down that scent. My son thought something was wrong with me.
Nope, all is good, its just that there was a daylily blooming in their perennial bed. LOL! I will say, the scent is nowhere near as sickly-sweet and overbearing as lilies can sometimes be. It's a bit ... greener? Woodsier? Whatever, I find it to be pleasant and subtle.
yep, d.lutea or d.grandiflora are good....but you could look out for the polkadot foxglove hybrids which are proving long-lived, long flowering (being sterile), well behaved and reliable. They also bloom for months, as will penstemons while campanulas, although they can be induced to keep going, tend to be more fleeting. Delphiniums - lovely but tricky (and snailbait).
phlowerpower: Thanks for your feedback! I do have red riding hood penstemon but it's only supposed to get 24" tall. I love delphiniums but I guess I thought those were biennials as well?? I better look into that. Any campanulas you suggest? I love hollyhocks but I just don't enjoy biennels. Too much work. :P
Gardenweed: What type of campanulas do you have? I also love delphinium but I guess I was under the assumption they were biennials. I am going to do some research though.
diggerdee: I will look into lupines! Thanks for the suggestion! Those are very pretty but I was looking for something taller like the biennials! I still might have to get some because I love that pale yellow.
Campanula: Thanks I will look into those. I feel like I saw the polka dot foxgloves somewhere. Now I can't remember where. Since your username is campanula... do you have any suggestions on a great campanula to grow? I may try delphiniums again... they are very pretty.
Thank you all for your suggestions!
This post was edited by thegardenat902 on Fri, Jul 18, 14 at 10:02
I agree that it is quite non-descript. I have never used it, as it has little to commend it. But it has its uses. It tends to smother out lower plants and presents a clump of plants with very uniform height. A good plant, en mass, if you have the situation and room for a clump. The foliage that could be used in contrast to other woodland plants. Such plants, as Astilbe, have nice foliage and value beyond flowering.
Okay, I dug out the package-I save the packages of seed that I have used up in a big envelope so I can remember names-and the ones I planted at the other house that would get a few seedlings each year were Ruegen. I had fewer plants there due to space, and so they were more heavily grazed (by me) so that may explain the fewer seedlings. I did move them from the flower garden where I had them, but mostly because I wanted to put another low growing plant there, and the soil was pretty much depleted and they seemed to yellow in the alkaline soil. I put something there that I replaced a lot, so I worked with the soil more then. They seemed to stay where they were and didn't really get too much bigger than a foot or two across. The ones I planted here I looked and they do have a name on their package-Summer Sweetness. They had a lot better germination than the Ruegen and maybe more vigor, but the soil is different here. Also it is a different seed purveyor, so that might make a difference, and I might just be a better seed starter now than I was. I just have more plants here, about twelve at first, and I have the Jewells, so I don't snack as much, so maybe that is it. I just had about forty+ plants pop up all around, and if they each get to be about two feet across then that will be too much room devoted to alpines for me, so I've been pulling them out. I do let them reseed around where they are planted, so if they spread there that is okay. I just don't want them in the vegetable beds or in the xeriscape beds or the perennials. I just planned for them to be ground cover between a couple of plum trees maybe about like you are thinking. Just give them the foot or two that they seem to want and get your dh to pick them to make jam and I think you'll continue to be happy with them.
Thanks for that information. I'll definitely be ordering the seed for Ruegen, which is what I think I have. I've been paying more attention to them as I walk around the front garden. They are scattered here and there throughout several beds and borders. Some are in too much shade to produce much fruit, but all are cute, tidy clumps that are not too big. I want to use them as a border in places around the main front bed as well as to help fill in under some shrubs to cover bare ground to discourage weeds. I will sow the seeds on the ground in September and let them germinate in place. I gather they need light to germinate so I'll just drop them on top of the soil and see what happens....
In the reading I've done about them this past week I've read that they are runnerless, but do produce short underground stolons that produce new crowns near the mother plant. They can be easily divided by digging out the offset crowns. In theory then, the clump could get large if it produces a lot of new crowns but that has not been my experience with them, and they are easy to dig up/out if necessary.
For anybody who may be interested in the plants we're talking about, I've linked an article (looks like on a blog) that's a bit old but describes them well and has good pictures.
Here is a link that might be useful: alpine strawberries