13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
a picture of the area would help could you plant some tall evergreens to screen her side out? Otherwise invite her over for a glass of wine and try and decide together what would be pleasing to both. she is obviously not the kind of person who wants to be agreeable but if you are new to the area, it is best to TRY first...then the roundup!
I hope she isn't the disagreeable type, I hope you have someone like Kevin's described- kind of jumping on the cleanup bandwagon but just doesn't know how to go about doing it correctly.
Yeah, the nixing of the rocks had to do with all the debris that gets down between them. A leaf blower actually does a decent job cleaning it all out but it takes so long. Also I was thinking that if you weren't sure what to do with the area, rock is a pain to remove and dispose of in the future if you get tired of it.
Plastic might not be the worst idea for that spot. Ivy might not spread by roots, but poison ivy surely does, and the plastic should keep them out, but if it was me, I would give it one last roundup spray, skip the plastic, put down two or three inches of mulch, and be done with it. Spraying once or twice a month should take care of anything that pops through, and if you do decided to plant something there later on it's no problem moving rocks or plastic.
I would suggest a mix of smaller shrubs and larger perennials for less maintenance and 4 seasons of interest. Like gardenweed I recommned the buddleia bushes & caryopteris, plus spireas 'Galen', 'Lemon Princess', 'Ogon', baptisia australis, tancetum 'Isla Gold', taller siberian iris cultivars, salvia 'Caradonna', penstemon 'Dark Towers', herbaceous clematis 'Roguchi' which you can grown through a 3 ft obelisk, iris pallida 'Vareigata', geranium sanguineum which make neet little mounds. The list is endless.
Thanks for all the great info!
I am trying to avoid most shrubs as they will eventually become larger shrubs, and be too large for the location without a lot of pruning. Example, one 8' tall Buddleia died back to the ground and was slow coming back. It's already 3' tall.
Likewise, I have 250+ hostas already (closer to 300 if I divide them) in shaded areas. They could also get sunburnt or pretty big in this location unless I get some minis that stay mini.
I would like to add some color, and also some texture that isn't easily found elsewhere in the yard. I'll be looking through the suggested ones carefully....
Again, thanks!
vince
I agree with you ellenr. Santa Rosa seems like a very different and very good company to do business with.
In their most recent clearance sale, I ordered three coral bells that I've wanted to try. They were only $2.50 each.
While the plants that arrived were well grown, two of the three have plain green leaves instead of the colorful leaves that the variety they are labeled should have. So I called Santa Rosa to ask about them and were they maybe mislabeled.
The nice woman I spoke with said, the ones still there of those varieties had just started to color up, and she hadn't heard about any mislabeling problems. But she willingly put a note on my order and said give it 2-3 months. If there was no sign of color, Santa Rosa would refund my money. We didn't discuss replacing the plants because I think they are already sold out of them.
I'll do business with these people again too.
Just a quick note that instead of 'Moonbeam', I believe you mean 'Moonshine'. There is yarrow 'Moonshine' and coreopsis 'Moonbeam'.
Yarrow 'Sunny Seduction' is a nice, sturdy light yellow colored one, mine gets to be 1.5-2 feet tall. I don't know anything about trying to grow it from seed.
Madonna lily(candidum hybrid. However my other bully who i called the orange day lily from asia is orange with no specks and has sword like leaves. This book i had since high school has it listed as orange day lily. Book was written by a roger tory peterson. I like to use that book to identify wildflowers. But i heard several others call that orange bully a tiger lily. Lol
Something I've done several times is post on freecycle. That's a nation wide e-mail group for free recycling of anything you don't want.
People who were interested came to my place on the specified day and, under my supervision, dug out what I didn't need. I got rid of/ gave away echinacea, dianthus, penstemon, centurea montana, digitalis - all of which had seeded so I had more than I needed. Everyone went home happy and I didn't need to do any of the work.
My hollyhock just started to bloom, and it is not the color I expected. I had collected seed from a deep purple or maroon plant, and had received some seeds in trade that were labeled maroon or deep purple. This is what is blooming. If you'd like seeds, I can try to save them as they ripen.
Martha
Martha, they're gorgeous - thank you! And what an interesting shaped leaf. I live in Canada, but will probably be going down to the US in September. (I have a mailbox in WA where you could mail them, unless you don't mind sending them to Canada.) If you can hang on to the seeds, I'll let you know about 2 weeks before I go down. Either way, I would, of course, pay you for the seeds and mailing. Many thanks!
Ah, sorry about the plant.
I went out to scout in my zinnia bed and I can't bear to bring myself to cut out the plants that have new growth. Maybe I'll try to amend around them. If it kills them, it kills them but at least they have more of a chance than with me & my snips.
I have read conflicting information on full vs. part sun. The zinnias are in full sun for the entire day and I'm afraid it may be too much. The other options are a morning sun only bed (but I can't see it without going around the house) and the other has sun from about 12:30pm through sunset, but it's fairly full of dianthus & lilies. I could move some dianthus, I guess.
boothbay.....if you want to keep your burning bush and control its size, cut it back drastically......burning bushes regenerate very well from old wood, so you can cut it back to "stubs" and it will resprout .....once you reduce it to the size you want, just clip it hard every season from now on....no need to get rid of it.......
....if you want to keep your burning bush and control its size, cut it back drastically......burning bushes regenerate very well from old wood, so you can cut it back to "stubs" and it will resprout .....once you reduce it to the size you want, just clip it hard every season from now on....no need to get rid of it......>>>
That is exactly what I did the year before ...I had it pruned down to about 2-3 feet and this is the result. No, I will wait for this Fall gorgeous color and then get rid of it..BTW, someone here mentioned berries..mine has never shown berries and its 20 years old.
How disappointing, ellen. I realize that you have been misled, put through frustration and had to waste your time and energy. Personally I'd take the refund. Usually companies let you keep the plants b/c they don't want to pay shipping back. So even tho' itâÂÂs NOT what you want you would have something for this yr.
I googled to see what it looked like and ran into seeds on sale for $2.00 at Select Seeds, where I have never bought but admired pics and have read positive comments from gw posters. Don't know how much shipping costs. But I might buy seeds on sale now to plant next yr. The refund from Santa Rosa should pay for a good quantity of seeds so at least you would not be out the money, only your time, effort and frustration, esp if the seeds produce color variation! Select Seeds sells the plant as well but it is sold out - you don't want it anyway!
Select Seeds - cherry hirta rudbeckia on sale - $2.00 for 51 seeds
thanks for the link River. Yes I will sow seeds next year. And I'll be prepared - that it may or may not come true to color. Hope they improve the variety so that it will come true. Because it is a beautiful plant.
Lowe's had had the Cherry Hirta in a beautiful color, unfortunately I didn't buy it, went back for it, and they were sold out. They also had red Gaillardia, which I also like, and did buy.
Hope this means that in the future Lowe's will expand beyond the Usual common perenniels.
Here is a link that might be useful: Red Gaillardia
Follow-up:
There was a story about this plant on the local news tonight. The filming was done at one of our nature conservancies and showed an actual field of this stuff. It was really beautiful, but clearly this isn't a case of a few plant here and there. At this conservancy at least, it grows so well it's crowding out native species.
According to the naturalist who only wears protective gloves when pulling the plant, some people are very sensitive to the toxins which can be absorbed through the skin and heart problems can be the result.
The general consensus seems to be this was a plant in someones garden and it escaped.
It still blows my mind there is a digitalis out there that apparently doesn't need coddling and will grow with abandon in Minnesota. Not my experience AT ALL.
Kevin
This post was edited by aachenelf on Wed, Jun 25, 14 at 4:34
I think scotch thistle was brought over here by the ornamental trade. I spend several days a year grubbing it out of the front 5 acres. I spent a lot of money getting rid of Quinoa akbea that was strangling a bunch of trees in some land that I shared with my sisters in Pennsylvania and we all lived far away. It was way into the canopies of trees and had a 3 acre spread and branches were breaking, trees dying.
One thing to think about in comparing Europe to the US is the amount of wild land that isn't gardened and this land can be invaded. I live close to a 3000 acre park, and a couple 8000 acre ranches. No one is out their weeding. Invasives are a problem. They blow in from the suburbs. They get brought in in hay bales. That is how I got Johnson grass. Birds bring vine berries.Yellow star malta thistle has taken over 15 million acres in California and it causes horses to get a neurological condition that keeps them from swallowing so they chew and chew and die of starvation. IyT is in the cattle guard and on my list to poison.
One can drive through States and states of Kudzo and then one enters the Mile a minute hanging forests of west virginia,virginia and Kentucky and then the Appalachians full of multiflora rose and Jappanese knotweed. It is sad to see the landscape in distress.
I have an fragrant mimosa in my yard. It is a native and it Makes A LOT of seed but there's a bug that lives and bores into almost every seed and lays an egg or something in each one. I would not advise taking it to England without a good population of that bug. It is hard to pull out with a wicked deep root and spreads by its root too. It is in balance here, and I love its fragrance, but I can see that if that bug wasn't here, it would be a bugger.
The thing about invasive lists is they are the plants that are already out of the gate. The ones that are just gathering steam have not been addressed. It gets so confusing because a plant van be a real problem in one place and not be a problem 20 miles away.Globalization with its ease of shipping plant material and the stepped up pace of plant introduction of these last decades is going to bite us in the @ss.
Sawfly larvae are pretty easy to control with ordinary insecticidal soap applications. Maybe even with a stout spray of plain water. I avoid using anything stronger than the insecticidal soap because so many other creatures love these larvae: birds, toads, frogs, wasps, and more.
Just a followup to this if anyone comes upon it.
In 2012 and 2013, I treated both the Loosestrife and Creeping Jenny with an early dose of a systemic insecticide for sawfly larvae and had no problems.
This year, there has been no damage.