13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
I hear ya. I have some shade areas too. Here is what I have had luck with thats easy from seed you could try. They do better in full sun but they will bloom in shade and stay upright. You name it, I've tried it. These are all easy to grow wild flowers about 2ft tall. You can dead head them in fall or let them naturalize which they will very easily. These are all easy to find in seed packets.
Annual gaillardia--comes up super easy, grows fast blooms non stop all summer until frost.
Mealycup sage--native perennial that blooms well and stays upright in shady spots, very easy from seed.
Purple coneflower--need to sow seed in fall for cold stratification. Takes a season to develop into a blooming sized plant.
Lanceleaf Coreopsis--super easy from seed, plant can be practically pulled out of ground and transplanted elsewhere if you want, they fill in fast and make a good filler until other plants fill in. Blooms in spring only but makes a nice green ground cover. They will carpet an area if you don't thin them but its easy to pull unwanted ones out.
Purple Winecups--they are blooming right now on the sides of the roads here, impossible to miss, you can buy seeds or collect from wild. There are also White Winecups.
Black Eyed Susans--- I have Rudbeckia 'hirta' which is a biennial out there blooming like crazy in a shady spot. Plant now and next year they will be fabulous.
I've purchased those mixed wildflower packets before, very disappointing and usually they only have a brief bloom time, I did two packs this year and said never again, waste of money. My description is "puny". These I listed are good, reliable and have presence.
Oh and I do have a "wild-scape"--maybe not what you visualize when I say wild, Its 95% natives here, very natural but still a garden. Ha ha, just had to throw that in.
This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Wed, Jun 4, 14 at 1:03
I think I had some gaillardia, Lanceleaf Coreopsis and coneflower in the seed mix. Some of the plants look like it anyway so I will let them live and move them later on. I figured they needed plenty of sun too.
I do have a purple coneflower growing in mostly sun that is in its second year. I could collect seed in fall and then sow them in the other area.
I've not seen any Purple Winecups on roadsides here. Yellow flowers bloom everywhere on roadsides now. I'm near Anderson, SC.
Mealycup sage looks like a great plant. It will go on my list.
Thank you for putting so much thought and effort into your replies.
No more "puny" plants from seed for me lol.
Notice I didn't say anything about taking action against a jerk of a neighbor, what I was talking about was putting having taking the action in writing where it can act as evidence.
As anyone who reads the Mid-Atlantic Gardening Forum knows I have been dealing with the A**h*le neighbor for years now. Every time they do something really over the line like cutting down their tree from my property and trampling all of my ferns in the process, they always claim they have the right to do it. But I always know the county laws better than they do (I used to be a reporter and I know how to use the Internet). So I usually let the County fix their butts with a warning letter and more recently a ticket for various violations. Have I ever taken direct action against their property? Dangedest coincidents I've ever seen.
Gorgeous!. When the seed pods start to dry out and twist, grab some of the seeds and tuck into the soil around your planting area...or save the seeds and start a tray in feb-march....you will get a better percentage of baby 'starts'...a bit better than nature does.
Of course i'm speaking of the wild variety but have had success with both...
Van Engelen, John Scheepers and Brent&Becky's accept orders already. I just placed an order this weekend.....I had told myself I would nor order anything...guess what? I lied. I asked John Scheepers to ship the bulbs in October so I can plant them before we go away on vacation in November.
I ordered fall crocus from B&B. They should arrive early for this fall blooming.
BTW, I have been waiting to see what the landscapers would do to those a few year old Allium Globemaster in Millennium Park in Chicago. They had removed old, worn out plants weeks ago leaving the beds messed up and the Alliums looking forlorn. This morning, all of them were piled up by the beds next to trays of annuals ready to be planted. So I asked one of the landscapers for the Alliums. They said yes! I stuffed the largest bulbs in my bag.
Lessons learned: always be on a lookout for landscapers and always keep a bag on you wherever you go. :-D
I've given a name on the Name That Plant Forum.
Here is a link that might be useful: Campanula glomerata 'Caroline'
I don't use hose guides unless you want to count the hefty shrub right next to one spigot that serves as a de facto hose guide. I don't often water the ornamental beds since we usually get fairly regular rain, but when I do, the spigot is placed so that with just a bit of care when I go around the corner of the house to one bed, I don't damage things, and in the other direction I am hauling the hose straight out down the driveway. I am more likely to water the veggie garden, especially during drier spells, but there isn't anything but grass between that hose bib and the veggies. I think that placement of the hose bibs is key to whether you need hose guides and since there were none when we moved into this old house which had little plumbing of any kind, we placed them where they would be of the most use with the least amount of fuss.
I've never though the commercial hose guides would work for me because they are way too short, so I use 1" copper pipe. I like the way copper looks when it ages, but regardless of my attraction to copper, the color doesn't jump out and detract from the garden plants. The finished height is an unmistakable 18" so I don't trip over them and I buy copper caps for them, thinking it makes them look a little better - though I wish I could find a more decorative topper instead. So copper pipe great for me.
Growing coreopsis for the first time this year but I'd imagine its like a lot of others - pinch them back before they even come close to setting buds. My heliopsis got kind of leggy and started spreading out in the center last year so I pinched them back by about an inch or two when they were a little over 6" tall and they're nice and compact right now
Here is a ground cover that might interest you. I personally love it as it gives you 4 seasons of color. It is a spreader so if it gets too big you simply remove what you don't want. It's an Angelina Sedum....
Here it's in it's chartreuse green stage changing from orange. It's also an evergreen. I like it as it adds lots of texture.
rfonte649, you want to start a new thread, either in the tree forum or in Name that plant, linked below. In each forum, the place to start a new thread is at the bottom of the list of threads, so scroll to near the bottom of the main forum page.
If you add where you are at least to state or city level, that will help also.
In my part of the country, redbuds and catalpa have heart-shaped leaves.
Here is a link that might be useful: Name that plant forum
This post was edited by nhbabs on Mon, Jun 2, 14 at 17:44
Fireants can be a PAIN to get rid of. They have developed an adaptability to a lot of stuff and since they are ON the plant itself, that creates another problem. I would try Cyper 8. It's an insecticide, but once dry, it is safe for pets and children, which means you can safely handle the plants once it is dry. It says it is good for ants, carpenter ants and fire brats (don't know if they are the same as fire ants), but if it kills carpenter ants, it will most likely be effective against those darn fire ants. Their bite hurts like the dickens and can easily get infected, so be careful.
Here is a link that might be useful: fire ant control
Mostly I ignore ants but If they make their hill in an inconvenient place for me then I use boric acid. I can buy it at the dollar store. I am not sure if they die or just hate it but the hill goes away. I don't mix it with water, I just shake the powder down the ant hole. I use it in the house too. A day or two later I sweep up the leftovers so I do not have mysterious white powder around my base boards.
This year, I had a 16F cold winter with another 19F snap late in March. My in ground Sago did just fine. I cut back ALL the leaves this spring and I was rewarded with a flush of 32 leaves. It is getting to be a good sized plant. The other one who is smaller has a 15 leaf flush with this treatment. I think it is smaller than your plant. Other small ones died. They were unprotected. They might just be slow in coming back.. Their leaves had gone all "calico" from the cold. So I cut them all off.
This baby has lived through cold fronts of 12F several years back when it was much smaller.
I do usually throw a warm cloth and leaves over the growth point to be on the safe side and I don't cut the leaves until they turn splotchy in the spring.I covered them with a blanket but it is too D@MN large and the horizontal configuration has the blanket always blowing off when the Blue northers hit. I am thinking about cutting them ALL the fronds off before the cold from hits and using them for insulation before the cold hits. God knows covering them with a blanket will be easier if one has just a stub. Also the old leaves are sucking energy that can go to the new young scarless leaves. Funny how they don't show the cold damage immediately. One thinks that you escaped the fire but then they turn on you. Maybe I will start collecting thatch for a chicken house or something silly.
If the Aralia creates berries, it will probably seed all over. I have Aralia Racemosa and get babies in quite a few places. It's important to move the babies right away if they grow where you do not want them. With Aralia, make sure you put it where you want it. They have tap roots and I have yet been able to MOVE an aralia by shoveling it out...they always come back. Last year, someone accidentally "killed" my Aralia with Roundup. It looked dead by fall, but it is up and in full swing, very large again already. A gorgeous plant, just make sure you put it where you want it.
I had corresponded with the American plant man who introduced it to NAmerica from Japan.
He stated that it does not spread by runners or rhizomes and he has never had any seedlings for this particular Aralia.