13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

Groundhogs do more damage than you can imagine. When we finally caught the one who was chewing our front windowsills (and stopped long enough to pose for a picture) there was also an end to the mysterious chopping down of my daisies a couple of inches off the ground with nothing eaten, just chopped down. Good luck.

In all the answers no one mentioned cutworm. Cutworm will cut off a plant just above the ground and then it feeds on the roots. Dig down where the plant is cut off and see if there's a fat grub. Dig it out and step on it. If it is cutworm he won't have moved far because he'll be dining on your plants roots. Cutworm is always a loner so if you get it you've solved the problem unless the cutworm moth has laid more eggs

You mean, Ken, you would like pictures? ?there aren't any here, and I would also love to see what grew.

Yes I enjoyed the experiment. I Checked every day to see what flowers had opened and how they grew. I would certainly do it again. Sorry I'm not a photographer but I did get out my camera. The batteries in my camera are dead. Not surprising since I haven't used it in 2 years. I will see what I can do about getting new batteries and taking some photos

Sedum (not sure which):

Center Glow Ninebark:

the roots seemed healthy and of two different kinds, seemingly inseparable. white, straight, and succulent---yellowish and threadier, finer. what's up with that? i never examined their roots before...

The roots are enormous!

My pleasure, Jaime. Just passing along the help others have given me.

Clematis climbs by wrapping leaf stems, so it needs something narrow to wrap around, such as a metal trellis with bars pencil thickness or less, or coated wire with 2" x 4" openings, or cotton string so you can compost it in the fall with the dead vines. With the string tie it to your railing, and anchor it to the ground near the base of the plant with stakes into the ground, or tie it around a brick at the base. You can fan them out toward the railing in future years as it gets larger, but that won't be needed the first year since they do more of their growing underground initially. I'd advise that you look for a type 3 prune clematis because they tend to be unfussy. At the end of the season after hard freeze, cut off the dead vines leaving a couple of buds per stem, and they will regrow in the spring. If you use string rather than a metal support, compost the string with the old vines and put out new string in the spring when the buds start swelling. All clematis take a bit of patience to get to full blooming size, usually 3 years to be good-sized, and after that they get better each year. I plant clematis either spring or early fall.

Thanks again Babs! You are a fountain of knowledge & so nice you take the time to give detailed responses. I am excited to get some picked out & planted--I now have other spots where I want to add clematis! :-)

Cinnamon ferns might even be happy in full sun with that kind of moisture. Also Japanese iris, Louisiana iris, and Iris virginiana. If you can do shrubs, Clethra would work as well.

ditto to babs and laceyvail. Astilbes love it moist - don't think they would like the standing water, but perhaps along the edge of the ditch...

I updated an existing garden that is under water for parts of the year; it is at the base of a hill on one side, with a creek that runs along it on the other side. Often it has standing water for weeks on end, of at least 6 inches (I lost a shoe in there once, lol - foot came right out of it when I went to move!). I ended up planting a lot of shrubs, as this is a large area and we were looking for big things. I also wasn't planting right in the water flow, as it sounds like you may be doing, so that will affect what you plant compared to what I planted, but still, maybe this will be of some help. I'll list below (from hopefully-good memory) what we planted.

- willow hakuro nishiki - probably way too big for you - I planted two of them, just to give you an idea of the large area I was dealing with. These are spectacular, though, IMO, if you wanted to consider one of them as a specimen...

- astilbes

- japanese and louisiana iris

- clethra

- itea

- cephalanthus (lovely and underused, IMO, and some new dwarf (4-ft) varieties out there now, I see

- redtwig dogwood

- viburnum (probably too big for you)

- deciduous hollies (again probably too big for you)

- marsh marigold

- bog rosemary

- lobelia siphilitica and cardinalis - the siphilitica is truly beautiful, but I would not plant this again - very vigorous spreader and I just don't have time to maintain/control. The cardinalis is spectacular (and I don't even care for red blooms!) and I highly recommend this one.

- ligularia

- filipendula (can't remember which kind off the top of my head)

- cimicifuga

- swamp azalea

- marsh hibiscus

Already in this garden and doing surprisingly well were bleeding hearts, hosta, hydrangea, peonies, columbines and some kind of small bulb which I'm drawing a total blank on at the moment - like a scilla or something... ugh, sorry, can't think of it.

And of course there are ferns, which were probably there before any garden was even thought of! There is also an elderberry which pre-existed the garden - this is along a wooded area so some things were growing there already, such as the elderberry, ferns, a clethra, etc. (plus virginia creeper, jewelweed, pokeberry, sigh....)

I think that is most of it. Good luck to you!

Simply lovely! You're having great successes!

Diggerdee, it;s Digitalis ambigua. The flower stalks tend to not be absolutely straight but I'm fine with that. And it's quite the seeder - I gave away a bunch last year. (If you want to take a ride to NJ, I'd be happy to give you some.)

I've had problems on and off with the horsemint caterpillar devastating my monarda. In years where I'm badly infested, I just cut off the flower heads and wait for a rebloom. I'm beginning to think that keeping the plant well watered helps it to overcome the pest. Or it could have been something about this year's weather? I should start keeping track. Sadly, there is next to no info about this insect.

Rouge, I also love the beaded water look. It's so pretty in the morning with dew drops. I have to remember to cut back my zagreb since it's overwhelming one of my patches.Catkin, thanks! Of course, for every success, there's been a bunch of failures. But that's gardening.

Thanks~!

Looks like garlic to me

Very beautiful! Have she over-wintered?

They are nice. Lowes had pots of them last year with about 3 or 4 plants per pot. I bought a couple of pots on clearance, separated the plants and planted them out. They survived the winter. I also bought some this past spring from a local nursery. Mine are fading but they did put on a nice show. Anyone have any luck growing from seed? The seeds are quite expensive.

If you like cosmic eye Correopsis you'll like Capucchino Gillardia. It is one of my favorite flowers. It is sold as an annual but it most often winters over in my zone 3 garden. Even last year when we had such a cold winter a few of them came up this spring. The seed is not that expensive and I start some every year in my greenhouse just in case they don't come up but there are always a few that survive. I add 1 or 2 to my beds but end up giving most of the seedlings away

I bought 'Mercury Rising' two years ago and it's come back beautifully each year.

Here it's paired with coreopsis 'Zagreb' and gailardia 'Burgandy'

And yet although one of my two clumps has expanded, I just attribute it to natural growth. I see no runners at all.

Perhaps attributable to acceptable spread, Rouge. I'd say mine had runners, which lay on the surface and radiated out in all directions from the plant. If clump-forming, it was by putting out those runners.

Also perhaps related to growing conditions, how long established plants are, correct labelling, etc., etc..

In trying to crowd enough perennials in (for ongoing colour), I'd rather especially smaller or medium-sized perennials not be spreaders (edgers excepted).

If you come across other unknowns in your garden, the Name That Plant Forum is active and mostly accurate.

Thanks sunny for the heads up. I'll have to be careful moving it. The choices in its current location are move it or kill it. Its really too bad the previous owners of the house let everything get so way out of hand. With all the herbicide I used last week I have a lovely ring of death all the way around the house now. Next spring I'll start completely rebuilding everything. For now I am just trying to save a couple plants.

I'll check out that forum morz8, thanks.

Gee, that sounds nice and very apropos. Probably there are detractors who are wishing for the Stella d'Oros and Knock out roses, but what a nod to place. We have American cranberry bushes around the city building, which is as native as we get. KF is the only OG to be seen.

TR I would love to see those photos as well. A nearby casino uses a lot of LBS and panicum and it's also a nice sight. Too bad they mow the Indian grass which fills several of the nearby fields...

Even overplanted KF is my favorite grass... I'm getting tired of cutting back the larger miscanthus clumps but for some reason the panicum clumps aren't as much trouble. Panicum 'Dallas blues' is my favorite and holds up all winter with a nice russet-tan color. I'm sorry to hear it's a flopper in richer soil, I have no problems but it's not exactly pampered here. The blue summer leaves and the reddish tones all winter really stand out.

love blue fescue but for me it dies out if anything grows near and it needs a trim and a feed in spring to look good.

I also love arundo. It's not a plant for everybody though :)

molina 'skyracer' is attractive and well behaved for me, it's a winner!

'hayefield' is a great blog for grasses, give that one a visit for sure.