13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

I just love people who give a ⢠name to a wild plant. They even gave a Northwestern mountain name to a Texas southwestern plant. Way to go. I know it by O. speciosa var berlandierii. It grows wild around me and I like to place it on walls and let it roam in my grass (what wild grass that I have). I let it wander at will. Yes it gets into my garden , but , hey, I am not a neat gardener. If you are, rip it out now. It is a thug for a small garden and it will cover an area and look best when it is bloom and then , in Texas, it disappears after awhile. Google it up in DG and there are lots of comments evenly decided between positive and negative.

This plants home ground is some pretty rangy thin soil. Some semi arid wildflowers when given good fertile ground and ample moisture will quickly die from such rich environments. This guy, on the otherhand does not die. it probably thinks it has died and gone to heaven. It has entered the land of milk and honey as far as it is concerned and morphed into a thug.

Mine normally stay somewhat contained, but I starve it. It gets nothing from me. It does go for the deeper dirt. It does not like my thin rocky gravelly dirt but likes the ground that has been effected by leaf litter and the deeper clay of the adobe soils over the thin rocky Brakett soils.

shade it somehow ...

i would have dont this on a rainy day ...

actually i cant even tell if this is indoors or outdoors... crikey ..

bag it to raise humidity if indoors..

ken

I'll add my vote to the "leave it alone and see what happens" suggestion. Plants generally adjust themselves to the conditions in which they're grown.

I would think thats the reason. It's really sad since usually the nicest plants are the ones most likely to rot. Maybe the stems are too thick and juicy and when they freeze all that moisture causes the stems to burst open.... They always seem to die from the center out, not from the edges in as you might think from too much cold.
My best plants usually self seed around August, depending on when they get enough rain to germinate.

I just took off the thick but loose layer of shredded dry leaves I used to cover plants in my cold frame and I was surprised to see that all of the 'Red Skin' digitalis survived our unusually bitter winter. Now, whether I can plant them out and bring them into bloom is another matter, but I'm optimistic.

Being something of a foxglove fanatic, I'm constantly trying them. Many is the time I've had the experience of others up North, that the overwintered plants either don't make it or rot during the first weeks of spring, even when overwintered in a cold frame. This year, I kept the covers on, onto which I'd piled evergreen boughs, and just now got around to removing the boughs and the mulch. I suspect my momentary success has to do with the careful watering in fall (not too much) and holding them until now.

We'll see.

Thank you for your responses last year.

Gary

"Barrington Belle" was developed by Carl G. Klehm so I would trust the images found at Klehm's Song Sparrow website. Have you considered returning the plant to the garden center?

Here is a link that might be useful: Carl G. Klehm

Yeah, I do trust the images at Klehm's, that's what concerns me. I sent the garden center an email asking if I could return it after it blooms if it is not close to the picture. No response as yet.

I think I probably will return it anyhow and just be patient til bloom time and then go shopping. Seems to be much more evidence it is red than pink.

there are two types of H ... the bush/shrub.. and the vine ..

the vine should do fine.. with some selective pruning thru the years.. to keep it on the fence. ...

i would NEVER plant a monoculture ... so put other things along the 30 feet ...

i like autumn clematis... but it can seed somewhat aggressively in some zones ... it doenst in my MI ...figure that out for yourself ...

i have that fence on my split rail... who knew it was called hog wire fence.. lol .. well.. apparently you and google knew...lol

if it were me.. i would.. given the space.. double the bed to 8 feet.. and leave at least 2 feet at the fence.. to walk back there and tend the garden from the other side ... at least you dont need that space to paint a wood fence .... otherwise .. figure out how you reach into a 4 foot deep bed ... presuming you dont have 4 foot monkey like arms .... w/o walking in your flower beds ...

ken

I like the idea of having the vines, either the clematis and/or the honeysuckle as a backdrop, but as others have said, they will need two or three feet added depth to the bed since they don't grow absolutely flat. Since your fence is only 4' high, the vines will reach the top and then spill over unless you train them to grow sideways or you have selected some of the shortest clematis. The spilling over will take depth as well.

I also like the looks of a deeper bed because you can have layers of plants allowing for something to be in bloom or have ornamental foliage for most of the season. In my beds, almost all of which are deeper than 4', I place stepping stones or some type of path in the middle of the bed where I can walk without compacting the soil around the plants when I do maintenance such as weeding or cutting plants back at season's end.

There's also a Shrubs Forum where you might get good ideas.

I am in Central texas, so I don't know your soil and water situation. There a couple of south texans that check in at the Texas forum. Here's a guess, Mexican olive can take part shade, Jasmine,salvia regla, mexican salvias, phlox, iron plant, greek pattern plant, mexican turkscap or sleeping hibiscus is much larger with hanging larger blooms than the texas variety and blooms in fall into winter and is gorgeous but less cold hardy that the normal turkscap but good for you., sago palms and other palms,You can grow many of the dioons that I can not. Mexican or Texan mock orange (harder to find), oak leaf hydrangea ,texas mountain laurel will grow in part shade, it just won't bloom as much. Abutilon, Barbados cherry,Yellow necklace pod, Clethra maybe, rio grande bee bush can take some shade.

This post was edited by wantonamara on Fri, Apr 18, 14 at 23:09

I just picked this plant up today - a six-pack. Didn't say what the specific variety was. Just "Purple" at the top of the tag, and described 18 inches tall, space 10 inches apart. Of course the first thing I did after I bought it was search for it here :)

Any way, it sounds like they are super - easy to collect seed from, so even though I don't have any now, I should have some this fall.

The ones that I thought were dead in the last freeze are coming up from the roots YEA!!!.

Thanks! I'll just plant them as is, and if they don't survive, I have tons of seeds left.

do you guys get a lot of aphids (green) in your foxglove leaves? if so how do you control them?

Wow...i havent' been getting emails saying I got replies...??? Thanks to all who replied.

E-maniac....since I only paid $3 for it, I'm not too worried. Altho I am the kind that will take it back right now and get a refund (or exchange for something else most likely...lol).

Thanks Sandy...that's a lot of good info. I 'think' maybe when they say dormant, they just mean it stops growing and blooming? Not sure, tho.

But good mention of not being a great potted plant. I do have a side area where I stick stuff I'm not that 'in love' with, so it might just go there. Would only get early morning sun, too, so would help with not frying it.

Oh...can anyone answer my #6 question? No biggie...just wondering. Sandy, you said people prolly think it looks like dandylions, so that makes me think yours has the skinny petals.

Bonnie

The patch started off as one plant in a 3" pot. I've dug up a fair amount for plant swaps, and managed to twist people's arms to take them :) (anything that blooms before the spring swaps can be hard to get rid of)

Dormant in this case means die off until next year. The big rose behind them covers them up during the summer, so it doesn't matter what they do.

perhaps the reason she missed all the other posts.. is that she posted this in the perennial forum..

but boxwood is a shrub ... and i bet that forum is where all the other posts are ...

good luck babera ..

ken

I am in South Central Montana, Billings. . . sorry to bother you here, I will go to the forum I need to be. . . and for the record ken. . . NO. . .I am not trying to blame my husband for anything. . . just looking for some helpful advise. . .

They don't show much of the variegation until they go into the blooming phase, also if the plain ones are nearby they'll cross and you'll likely lose the variegation. Mine look like the winter did them in :( but I noticed a seedling or two so there's hope.

Thanks. I don't have any plain ones. OThers could have some but I doubt it, I'm the only gardener I know around here. I will have faith that variegation is coming!

Same thing as jebfarm said, give them more time. I have some blooming, yet the late planted ones are not up yet. They are always late the first year.

But..... Good thing you checked the bulbs for firmness. I was just at one of the Marts yesterday and took a look at their spring bulb display. All kinds of crocus daffs tulips and even amaryllis kits. All rolled out for spring and all dried up, hollow, and dead from last fall. A guarantee for failure.

My Mt. Hood daff leaves are just peeking above the soil. You don't say where you are from, and you don't say what kind they are, but I would also give them more time. Give us a photo when they bloom!