13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
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
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!
For sun:
- single peonies - so charming and no staking necessary!
- Persicaria polymorpha
- 'Midnight Rose' heuchera
- hardy hibiscus, especially deep red ones like 'Fireball' (with dark, cut-leaf foliage) and 'Lord Baltimore' (with green maple-like foliage) or Disco Belles
- pulsatilla
- culinary sage - edible; pretty flowers; attractive leaf color that is a perfect foil for warm colors; becomes interesting little woody trees as the plants age
- Siberian irises in blue
-veronicastrum
'Silver Mound' artemesia - must be kept clipped to 4" or so
- spring bulbs, especially 'Ivory Floradale', 'Queen of the Night' and 'Angelique'
My favorite full sun plants are trees, shrubs and vines (clematis mostly). If I was doing my full sun front beds over from scratch, I'd use mainly shrubs, trees and vines, underplanted with spring bulbs and a few low perennials that could handle sun or shade (e.g. heucheras).
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I would like to Thank You All, Gardenweed, SunnyBorders and Daisincrete for the advise. The plants seem to be at a standstill, but that could be from it still being cold outside. I was thinking of pinching out the middle to spur growth. I'll leave them, since I am most excited they have made it thru winter.
Sincerely,
Avis
My pleasure PM2. When I moved here I had plenty of ideas but decided (because I'm probably anal to some degree) to do my homework before poking a spade into the dirt. My first garden book suggested drawing the existing garden layout--including structures, hardscape, plants, trees + any other miscellaneous items--on graph paper along with the compass orientation of the property. I found that to be of enormous help when I began designing my garden beds, either from scratch or else modifying those that were here when I arrived. Having a defined plan, no matter how preliminary, seemed to make things come together more quickly. Did things end up the same as the plans I made and sketched with a pencil? Guess again. Am I happy with how it looks? Next question.
IâÂÂm looking forward to trying your book recommendation, ispahan and comparing it to the DiSabato book.
Gardengal, I have had vinca minor in deep shade, hemmed in by the driveway, the street and a fence and behaved well for 20+years, then tried it in full sun and what a difference. 3 small transplants turned into an 5ft wide patch in one season. I quickly dug it up. So that is true in some cases.
Gardenweed, I must have read the same book, [g] because that was one of the first things I did too, was to draw the existing garden on graph paper and follow the sun patterns and mark where I had sun and how much and orientation. I still have that original drawing and I pulled it out just last week to check something and was very happy I had it and didnâÂÂt have to go measure something all over again.
Sorry, I thought I did list my zone (zone 5) it rarely gets 100 here in the summer, if it does it's an unusually hot summer. But with that being said it can get as cold as -20 in the winter.
I do have cranesbill geraniums in the same bed as well as columbine (I forgot to mention)
So, I guess adding a few more part sun plants is doable. . .thanks guys. . . (off to add my zone)
So the planting bed is on the north side of the fence? In summer, that area is not going to be in much shade at all - the sun is nearly overhead and the fence won't pose much of an obstacle. You can plant just about anything that doesn't demand full sun.
I had this same situation in my old garden and even though we are up in the higher northern latitudes here in the PNW, my planting bed was still in nearly full sun for most of the day during the growing season. Winter's another story but much less of an issue for herbaceous plants.
I haven't transplanted any of my D. spectabilis 'Alba' but when I moved here in 2005 there were multiple species D. spectabilis growing here and there around the property, likely planted by my mother at some point. I decided to re-purpose some of the 350+ patio bricks I dug up (my folks used them for edging) by laying a walkway behind my garage. I hired workers to dig & lay the walkway, repurposed the soil to raise one side of it so I could plant perennials.
There used to be a bleeding heart growing out of a crack in the retaining wall at the base of some steps from the walkway leading down to my walkout cellar. I asked the workers to even up the steps with leftover patio bricks. Somehow the bleeding heart growing out of the crack got moved to the top of the stairs. It's growing in full sun and has come up every year since 2007 which tells me where I am they can evidently handle full sun.
I guess my point is, generally in my experience they're pretty tough. I'm not sure there's much you can do to destroy them if they like where they're growing.
One garden rule of thumb is if it blooms in spring, move it in fall and vice versa. If you move your BH, do it after it's done blooming when it isn't putting all its energy into flowering.
Another tip: I have a white bleeding heart growing in full shade that looked like the photos below in 2010. After our devastating storms in 2011, it barely grew to 1/3 of its previous size the following season.
Hmmmm.....
My only thought is that last summer, this particular plant died back in the heat so transplanting that one would not have been possible in the fall.
The one that broke off did so before it got too terribly hot and I placed the pot in the shady area where it is now planted and it did not die back until it got cold after I had transplanted it.
Wallflowers, (erysmium cheirii) are traditionally grown as biennials (often as part of a 'bedding out' system) but mine have been robustly perennial for over a decade. Nicotiana sylvestris is often good for another go-round, but both of these probably point up the shadings of classification and expectations between true biennials (Campanula medium), short-lived perennials or tender perennials grown as annuals.
Have just been on a seed buying digitalis rampage after being hugely heartened by last years robust growth of fat rosettes, just beginning to extend skywards (D.purpurea, grandiflora, lutea) in our bedraggled and wild woods - expecting a froth of various umbellifers and many white foxglove spikes.
Interesting, I grew Erysmium 'Bowle's Mauve' sometime back which is supposed to be perennial but it acted like a biennial for me. I loved the plant, it bloomed in late winter & was evergreen with very attractive blue foliage which I would have liked even without the blooms. The plant got very big with a woody base so I trimmed it back after blooming the second year, it slowly died so I figured it was a biennial. Just looked it up, its perennial.
And i mean to say, im worried about the upcoming rainy season, the spot its in is a bit lower so i have no doubt it will be swimming until i have the front garden ready for it, weighing my options, im probably better risking moving it early than leaving it in a flooding area? Ken, im sorry you havent had any come back! They are so beautiful! I was ecstatic to see the tiny bit if green popping up, i couldnt stop thinking about it all this loooong winter, wondering how it was faring!
i should have said.. the foo foo ones never came back ... the more exquisite the less hardy ... i planted them for a few years.. as annuals ....
but i still enjoy the annual ... larkspur.. good enough ... for me .. such a blue ....
ken
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.