13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

Thanks aseedisapromise and Campanula,

Just today I sent my order to a nursery,
So now I combine the dwarf Iris with Aubrieta ( combo grows near here for years and looks great in early spring),
Add some Lalavender around it for flowers in summer and Aster pyrenaeus Lutetia for fall. Perhaps add Pulsatilla and Iberis later.

The bearded Iris do grow around here, must be a climate thing, right now they are cropping up everywhere, and actally I got a bucket full of tall Iris from a garden neighbour.

The tree gives little shade, most of the stuff gets full sun till early afternoon.
And I will see whether I need to adept the planting if the tree gets bigger in 3-5 years.

Will get back later with details on allotment,

Bye, good night, Lin

ps: my great garden help, clipping the Iris before planting

And just some tall Iris ( barbata- elatior I assume), in our street

Another plus - muddling dry soil about with a hoe creates a 'dust mulch' which acts as any mulch, preserving ground water and making removal of surface weeds a doddle.

deleted - dbl post

This post was edited by campanula on Wed, Apr 16, 14 at 16:10

It's been a long time since I've grown a "Bird", but as I remember these things are pretty tough.

Generally speaking if a plants root system has been compromised (roots chopped off), the leaves are going to suffer because there aren't enough roots to supply them with water. And generally speaking, the solution to that is to remove some of the leaves until the roots have an opportunity to regrow. Without seeing the plant, it's hard for me to judge if this is necessary or not, but keep an eye on the plant. If it starts to look droopy and stays that way, it might to something to consider.

Kevin

Kevin,

Thanks for the encouragement! I did trim off a few leaves that already had a bit of damage anyway, so I figured that would clean it up a little and help it survive. I appreciate that advice.

So far I think it's okay. I'm glad to hear you say they're tough. I do feel like it's a little hard to tell since the stems and leaves are so stiff I'm not sure they would really ever look droopy unless they were brown and dead...

Thanks for the visual treat, you have some beauties there. My hellebores are past their best now, along with the grape hyacinths, early tulips and mini daffodils. Lots of the clemies are in bud and the pulmonarias are still looking good but nothing as eye catching as you've shown here. Hmmmm, that little ginkgo, I wonder, Christin how big does it eventually grow, height and width, I'm running out of space here.

Annette

-Annette, my Iseli Nursery tag says the Ginkgo grows 4-6" per year and will reach a size of about 3-4ft in 10 years.

Another site (Missouri Botanical) says it will get only 2x2 in ten years and will ultimately get to a size of about 3ft tall and 8ft wide.

I've also read that they are great bonsai plants, so you could easily keep it containerized too ;-)
CMK

I have been looking more on the web and I think you are right to advise cutting it less. If all goes well, I will still have some (low) privacy and if it croaks, I can replant next spring. While I cut, I will apologize profusely to it in hopes of encouragement. It's been here so long it is almost a pet.
Where are you? our N Ca spring is nearly over- everything came at least two weeks early here this year. Min

I'm in San Antonio, where spring was slow in coming. I wouldn't worry about new growth on that plant, though. Just shoot some water to it, and perhaps some fertilizer for evergreens.

the easy way ... would be to use the very expensive applicator at the link ... fill with full strength round up or generic ... and drip it down the D leaf blades ... and just kill the bulbs ... and then return the unused RU to the properly labeled container ...

they are cheap ... and why disturb the peony???

i do this with things growing in the middle of hosta clumps.. all the time ...

no where is it written.. that RU must be sprayed ... and that is where all the problems begin ...

and no ... i would not be concerned about it being stored in a rotting bulb and somehow being transported by dementors to the peony ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

If you don't want to thin out by digging up the daffodils, then you could thin about by the methods mentioned above. So in this case, don't cut or trim every daffodil but go ahead and thin it enough to where you are satisfied with how it does look. Even if grows like that again next year (until the daff bulb dies off), just trim it again for the growing season.

I don't have as many daff plants as you do, so everyone is precious and I'll try not to kill them off. But when you have many like you do, then it's easier to just whack whack whack at the leaves to cause the eventual ruin of the bulb below.

But another option is to wait until the daffodil flowers. If you end up liking the flower then it might be worth it to carefully dig it up in the fall and spread it out to other areas.

Eric if you plant them in swptember and dont let them dry out they shouild do fine! All of mine came up this year:)

I've long since given up hoping for the potted mums to overwinter in the ground. But they do sometimes overwinter in the big pots we transplant them into and store in the garage for the winter. Last year a large mum was growing strongly by the time we moved the big pots out of the garage in the spring. So I left it in the pot, gave it some slow release fertilizer and clipped it back in mid-May, early June, and early July to keep it bushy, and then let it set buds and bloom in August. It's the orangy-red one in the picture below. As you can see when you compare it with the dark red potted mum bought fresh last summer, my clipping/pinching (and perhaps not enough fertilizer?) didn't produce nearly as bushy a plant as the purchased potted ones. We moved the pots out of the garage last weekend. Two of the mums are still alive but I'm going to throw them out this year. I've got an order in for the Mammoth mums and I have an old hardy white one that we like so I'm going to stick to the hardy types now and not bother with potted ones other than perhaps as throw-away temporary fall color until I see how the Mammoth ones perform here.

Botanical name: Crocus vernus
Common name: Spring crocus

Yellow is a danford iris and the buds just emerging in the upper right is a hyacinth.

Nhbabs....while I don't know what 'sandy loam' is (too lazy to google...lol)...I know I don't have it....hahaha. Mine are in raised bed so soil was purchased in bags a few years back. I supplement (amend?) it each year and feed the plants every now and then. And as I said, the other plants are real happy so I think the soil is fine.

I'm beginning to think maybe because u don't get full sun, urs are happier. Mine get sun from sunrise until late afternoon. I also noticed my blooms are fading now (both in color and quantity). Is it time for that to happen? I didn't recall them blooming a long period of time.

Did find some 3" pots of it @ Lowe's for only $2.28 (reg. price) so I grabbed a few more and hope they fare better...lol.

Babs, I have 'Waterperry Blue' too, in full sun. And I haven't decided what I think of it yet. It's next to thyme and they get into each other and next to the lawn and some yarrow that is in my front lawn, gets into both of them. So I plan on moving it, but the Waterperry Blue does grow well in full sun.

Did you get a response? It looks an awful lot like one of the eupatoriums (or eutrochiums), aka Jow Pye Weed. The description might fit too.

Yes, thx...got couple other responses besides urs. And although they all come close, I seem to remember my bloom being really tiny. The pye weed is right color but bloom is just too large....(if memory serves....been long time since I saw it).

If u want, use link that nhbabs included in reply above to see the conversations.

Ho, well, I am replying in a good mood (I have intense mood swings with this project). Couple of weeks ago, during the rat invasion, I was quite a bit less sanguine and to say I am on a steep learning curve is the understatement of the century. But yes, as it happens, all well on the seed front.....although inevitably, I have (again) been forced to admit that all the rest of my family were right and I was wrong. The preppers and clearers (all of them) have been smirking - particularly when a felled tree landed in the centre of a massive newly planted bulb colony........ Nevertheless, there are many foxgloves, hesperis, campanulas, myosotis, welsh poppies.....and other common, but tough and prolific plants, in various parts of the woods....and 25 Crown Imperials. The soil is amazing - it really is. True, it is a bit stony and tree-rooty, but it has also been fallow for over 50 years with a lush cover of weeds and leaves. The narcissi were the stoutest plants I have ever seen.....and the foxgloves are going to be head-high
Hugely limited by having crap machinery (used to gardening in tiny spaces, we spent all our money on beautiful German knives, Japanese secateurs, Swedish axes - yah know, gorgeous stuff but hopeless for the task ahead).......but hey, adaptability is surely a gardening byword.....I have spent my entire gardening life in a fever of insane ambition which inevitably means crashing and burning on a regular basis.

Yeah, we are enjoying ourselves....and I have tree seed germination too.

The teapot is sadly depleted.

I have spent my entire gardening life in a fever of insane ambition which inevitably means crashing and burning on a regular basis.

==>> life would be boring otherwise ... lol ...

thank God you channel that stuff in the garden .... instead of thru rampaging thru town with a machete.. lol...

i mean really.. if you are going to snap ... go green.. lol ...

speaking of falling huge limbs... i once had a 16 inch oak branch drove a hosta about 12 inches into the ground... it lived.. go figure.... sometimes i dont understand how if i trod on it.. it will die.. but mother 'witch' nature drops a ton of dead weight on it... and it comes back.. whats that all about ...

ken

I think it is OK to have your husband do the digging to save on the cost, but I would call the engineer back to inspect the work before refilling. Gardengal48 makes good points. Al

my house also sits on a hill ... with a slope ...

i put in the wall ... and it apear to be built like a castle on a hill.. adding horizontal aspects to the view.. before. it looked like it would slip right off the hill.. lol

it also added flat planting beds ..

in you application.. you could have the working drain part close to the house ... and garden beds below ...

how that all works in highly disturbed soil.. after he has dug.. and how it all need be done.. is beyond me ...

though extremely hard labor.. hoiking around the blocks.. it wasnt all that hard in my sand ... but i am not qualified to tell you how it could be done properly ....

its just an idea.. regarding your titled question ... to bifurcate two differing products ...

ken

Um yes, grasses give that lovely sense of movement too. Meadow gardening has been huge here in the UK, with the wildflower meadow a desirable must-have. Love the idea of gravel paths between planted mounds. Although I have wide boundary edges before the treeline and have cut a large clearing, most of the real sun-loving meadow plants are not likely to do terrifically well.....but on the other hand, the high, very loose poplar canopy sustains surprisingly good light levels. So, I am attempting a sort of meadow styling in woodland setting, if you get the drift of my thinking. Obviously, carex sp. do well here, along with a few experimental miscanthus, while the darker parts are thick with umbellifers and silenes, stachys, valerian, ferns.

I suggest looking into what plants they have in the woodlands and grasslands of the Southeast. Gulf coast muhlies, penstemmon tennuis, I could definitely see those wild piedmont azaleas, not the hybrids in your woods. They are so much more subtle in their flower shape and shrub structure. They are beautifully airy. There is a great understory tree that makes me go into a state of lust that I can not grow here even in my dreams.. The fringe tree. Parsley Hawthorn, scarlet and the white buckeyes are other ones. I can't grow them where I am. I do have a buckeye here. Redbuds. Mexican plum trees. Ground orchids are also abundant in the east. The cross vine is endemic east into Florida and that will climb 50 feet.

They have grasslands in florida, Louisiana, Mississippi that would be a better match for you. Turkey foot or Bushy Bluestem would br a good grass for your wetlands. I can get seed for that in our wetlands. We have ditches too. LOL.. western Oregon and washington state would be a good weather match for you. AHH ferns. And the arisemas, But I am sure that all this has been in your investigation.

I do a lot of research on the Lady Bird Johnson's wildflower site. The plant Database has all sorts of avenues to go down.. Here is and easy way. The recommended species list has states that you can click on and an abbreviated species list comes up. More detail can be had by going to the database and listing parameters and specific colors, bloom times habits to cull the list. I can waste all sorts if time here..

Here is a link that might be useful: USA's states recommended species lists.

What an incredible garden --, complete with kinetic sculpture and cat! Beautiful! The colors are magical -- like stained glass.

I also found an inspiring photo of columbines from the Montana Native Plant Society on the website Blackfoot Native Plants, dating from two years ago.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Thanks for the props NHbabs! I re-read that thread and all the drama of the garden tour, phew. Makes me glad it's still wintry here and not quite time to get back out there quite yet.

Welcome Norwoodn! Montana has tons to offer for gardeners. Every region has its challenges but the tradeoff is that we get to live in awesome Montana, right?

You've gotten great advice and the links that Monarda posted contain some of my go-to sources. I use the info from MSU extension frequently. Deer are so persistent (we don't have antelope except for one isolated visit) and everyone has their own approach in gardening with them. Ornamental plants are not so hard because there are many options that the deer don't eat. I have over 50 roses and they nibble on them but don't destroy them. Tulips are not worth the effort, and the late summer/fall vegetable garden becomes a real battle. For us, those are the two biggest challenges.

I can offer plenty of specific suggestions if you want - just let us know in more detail what type of space you are trying to create. If you are near Bozeman I also always have divisions to share.

But for now, the yard is all white again this morning. Back to skiing!