13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
White only if you are willing to do the maintenance. I remember when the farm fence were all white. Then rather suddenly, they all switched. Around here, you can occasionally run into a fancy horse farm with white fences, but you know those places have money.
Interesting how areas of the country do things differently !
Locally , the finer horse farms and cattle farms use black rails . White I now see in lots of neighborhoods that have no farm or rural feel whatsoever . Also if it is white it's almost always vinyl , which would be lovely but a huge expense . I don't see too many un stained or un painted rails , unless they are very old and falling apart. Our installer is using some kind of treated for rot and termite wood .
. I think I see more black than white . Mad gallica , I think it's the opposite here in tn ! Or at least my part .
I know the white will match the trim on house . I like white as long as it looks fresh and clean. White looks nice , sun or shine .
I feel like the black will disappear behind plants and not be as jarring to the eye when it first goes up.
I feel like both are great and no wrong choice ! Isn't that awful ?
You could have come and dug up our mature mimosa instead. We now only have the stump left. That thing grew a foot a day or so, seriously. I have never heard of a nursery potting something up in dirt. Very wierd. Good luck with your little tree.
Ha ha! When I see big burdocks on the side of some roads here I think the same thing: "pretty nice looking weed - it'd look better than a hosta in a few spots I have". Good to know I'm on the right track :) Looks great! Its only a weed if you say it is.
I've had mine growing in a shady rock garden for over 10 years at least. I also had a variegated one for over 5 years, but it finally bit the dust. The variegated one was really nice, but not nearly so vigorous as the standard variety. Like most plants, it will bloom better with more sun. Great, low-care perennial.
Ditto what wantonamara said. Next, don't panic. Lavender needs full sun but requires dry to average soil (see link). Planted in healthy soil on a steep slope they should have sufficiently adequate drainage to thrive with minimal help.
Here is a link that might be useful: Missouri Botanical Garden - 'Hidcote' Lavender
and never expect all of many to survive ... expect some ratio of failure ...
could you favor us with a pic of the whole .. i have never seen nor heard of the netting ... sounds interesting ..
BTW .... dig up one of them.. AND FIND OUT HOW WET OR DRY THE SOIL IS .... and adjust watering accordingly ...
if you are just guessing with your watering.. obviously.. you are frustrated because you lack info ... but coming to us for info ... gets you no where.. but more guesses... so all you are left with.. is digging some holes and finding out .. and mind you .. dealing with a hill ...and how water moves across and thru it.. can be divergent in differing spots ... and that may be why.. those struggling.. are not all in one place.. leading you to dig more holes ...
you might want to dig out all those struggling.. and set up a nursery bed with some break in the blistering sun ...... and see if you cant rescue them.. by fall ... then.. you have a whole bunch of holes all set for observation ...
i SUSPECT ... you have been incredible successful ... perhaps even better than many of us might do ... but are a perfectionist at heart.. and its driving you a bit crazy ... that yoru success is not 100% ... heck.. most gardeners ... dealing with the vagaries of mother nature.. would probably be thrilled.. with a 90% success rate and would just replant the holes in fall [NOT NOW] ... and if that is the case.. the problem is in your head... LOL ...
BTW.. in fall ... you can harvest some of the plants on any edge.. and put them into the bare spots... to make the 'look' equal ... and then add replacements at the edge..
or even better.. DIVERSIFY your planting ...
good luck
pic of the whole.. please
ken
I checked and both winky red/white and canadensis have leafminer damage but the winky one is drying out and the other one seems fine. Makes me wish I had only purchased canadensis. Good to know.
The soil does drain well. I have many small barlows double plants. Do they have problems taking our heat too?
Thanks everyone!
This URL shows the range of A canadensis.
Here is a link that might be useful: A. canadensis range
It is sure interesting to read about what people lost. This past winter was certainly brutal. Really the only thing that didn't come back for me is my oldest and largest butterfly bush. For years this kept coming back with new growth every spring on the old woody stems and was a really vigorous grower. This year there was a bit of growth at the bottom but I could see it wasn't developing well and now noticed today that the whole main stem is rotting. Time to replace it, but I want to find the biggest one that I can since this one ran about 6-7 feet high when in full bloom.
Keith
The exact same thing happened to me, Keith. I had a piece of green growth, a small piece, on the bottom of a 6 year old Royal Red Butterfly Bush. When I didn't see it growing any higher, as the rest of my butterfly bushes did, I checked on it and the greenery was gone. Now, I need to find a replacement as well. An old friend bought the Royal Red for me at a local gardening flea market so I don't know if any of the local gradening centers will have one. I'll no doubt end up with another variety.
Linda
Nothin' for me this year.....because bloody great builder's boots and scaffolding stands ended up right in the middle of mine. They had not a single bloom (just many tiny aborted budlets....damn!). Gritting my teeth at the miserable garden devastation (new roof - not my choice), I have to avert my eyes from the entire bed. Thankfully, I did remove a few of the plants before the chaos but the paeonies were enormo-size. Next year, they should recover.....or the year after.
Good for you - free plants are always a bonus.....but good free plants are the tops.
Lol mxk3. The light pink is my favorite also.
The other 2 were the same...dark pink.
Sorry to hear camp. Those who do not garden are totally clueless!
I've had people just stomp thru my beds! Of course I'm always quick to correct their clumsiness (to put it nicely). My daughters friends saw a new side of me after running/cutting thru my beds. They haven't been near them since ;)
Another pic of the light pink peony.....
Many Baptisias are from the south of the US and don't have hugely long periods of cold stratification periods but usually a wet summer and short periods of cold. so maybe cold/warm periods in winter are what they like, and sprouting immediately in the summer rains.. They don't much like my hugely alkaline soil. The B. leucophaea grows wild in the Lost Pines area 40 miles east of Austin. I drool for them. I never see Baptisias in gardens around here. I tried both with an established plant and seed. I neither cold stratified but I might have scared them. Getting them germinated was easy but establishing them was not. I might have been a bit too harsh on them.
I always just assumed this was one of those plants that can tolerate some warmth and maybe a little drying out, but really prefers the cool damp life. If you want to check out Ian young's bulb log, he usually has a few posts on them since they seed all over his garden. Try looking through June for the blooms scattered throughout the garden.
He gardens in Aberdeen and also has things like blue poppies selfsowing, so if you've ever needed to pull up excess Himalayan blue poppies then this might be the plant for you!
Here is a link that might be useful: Bulb log
There are an awful lot of terrestrial orchids that can be grown in ordinary potting mix - maybe with a bit of extra peat or sand or perlite depending on their needs. I grow a few which aren't hardy here, but they do go outside in the summer protected from the squirrels by a wire cage. For winter when they go dormant, they simply get stuck in a cool spot in my house. The only one with a bit of a special need is the Hab. rhodecheila which likes small pebbles added to the potting mix. The small rhizomes like to attach themselves to these. It's really odd to see the rhizomes wrapped around these stones.
Kevin
Cats and birds have been around for a long time but cats have not been fed and cultured the way we do now. Larger predators have been removed until this rebirth of coyotes. Balance is a hard thing to maintain. Human intervention of the food chain is all over the place and sometimes further intervention is called for and sometimes less is called for.
I have been asked by "my" biologist who has designed my wildlife plan to BE the predator that brings the land back in balance. I don't like it, but it has been suggested to kill Racoons,, stray feral cats, deer, and FIRE ANTS. They are all out of balance. I know my neighbors' cats that live close to me., but there are 2 places that have 30+ cats. One old man who used to buy 40lbs of cat food a week died a year or so back and , oh lordy, were we trapping some sorry mean cats that inundated us and taking them down to the shelter. I have another guy who lives about 1/4 mile from me who has at least 30 cats hanging at his house. They make it over here and we try to scare them off. My cats are past their hay day of hunting. They don't bring down anything. Even the lizards pay the little mind. The cats do like the field mice and the rabbits. I see a family of really fleet whiptails that have moved in. The coon population has dwindled because of our activity and the foxes have replaced them. They are much more in balance. The coyotes are working on those cats. I hear them at night. My cats stay inside at night. I tried being a cowbird predator but that didn't work out too well. The rather large trap is at my neighbors house raising chickens. My neighbors got rid of their cows and we don't see the cow birds now. The deer are a hard nut to crack. Our land is weirdly shaped and the place they love to hang is by the road and hunting them is dangerous for passing traffic. We do have a mountain lion on occasion. Then , all the deer get scarce in a hurry and I start feeling like I am on the menu when I go run the trash out in the night time with my long mag light grasped tightly. I have heard it roar. We have boars. The lions killed 2 400lb boars a couple of years ago and my neighbor shot 4 of them last summer. They can root up ground in a hurry.I wish I could channel that energy in the spring, I wouldn't need a tractor to plow over a field.
We do have wildlife in disarray. The boars do damage, the deer are making once common trees endangered. I am doing my best caging tree seedlings and watering them in the summer when we have no rain. Lately there have been no seedlings making it through the summers because of the drought. I have been revegetating and diversifying flora and fighting invasives. It is a big pill.
Yes, deers used to be much less common, due to less habitat, more food pressure (like bison, elk, etc), and have predation from mtn lions and wolves.
And that causes them to be more like what we call them, hooved rats. I admit they're cute...and I love them, but I know exactly how much damage they do when overpopulated.
I agree with above poster about serious population reduction. I also have a neighbor with 30+ cats, the coyotes do help in keeping population down, but they're struggling with the birthrate and people wanting to kill coyotes.
In the past 30 years of my life, I have seen the local extermination of chipmunks and possibly flying squirrels (though I wouldn't bet on the latter), frogs and toads (for the most part, leopard frogs still semi-plentiful), and many snakes, due to human efforts and their pets run amuck.
As a consequence, I've seen bird populations dive, rats and mice have lemming years, and insect damage to local crops go WAY up.
You could say 30 years is too short a cycle to pay attention to, but it's the only cycle I can see in my life time.