13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

I am zone 4, but sometimes I'm able to sneak in a zone 5 here and there. Does it take awhile for the shredded umbrella to fill in?

Ever tried any shade tolerant Hakonechloa grasses? I love the 'Albostriata' and the 'Aureola'. 'All Gold' is nice too and 'Ben Kaze' I'm told has pink hues in the fall. They do like moist soils as well as shade.
Hellebores have nice foliage for most of the season and have baby seedlings if you choose a good spot for them. I prune back their foliage at bloom time though for a fresh bunch of leaves in spring.
Ferns are lovely as well....Once you get started on them it becomes a disease though. So many beauties!
For bigger leaves, lungwort varieties work too...or even lady's mantle.

I've found that as long as the flower buds stay underground, they will be fine till spring.

Thank you Gardenweed! I like to spend as many hours working in my gardens a day as I can. I love spring flowers so I really have done a number!!! I lost count after 300 or 400 bulbs! I grow them to brighten up my house. I love creating arrangements and I find it very sincere to cut flowers out of my own yard for my family and friends. The $ tree is a great place for vases as give aways!!! :) KEN,,,,it is the hyacinths that I'm seeing! Keep on gardening.....:) Erin

there are many pot-aholics in the hosta forum ... who have many tricks for over wintering pots.... in many diverse zones ...

ken

I do not know if you can find them now but anything I want to over winter they are planted in Styrofoam coolers. I pick them up at the dollar store. Punch drainage holes, stack up the leaves and set the coolers on the leaves. Plant and stuff the leaves around the coolers.

I have never lost a plant with this amount of insulation.

We had hardy cactus growing near a tree in our front yard in SD when I was a kid. We spent the summer barefoot as much as possible and got many of those hairy spines in our feet. I vowed never to have those buggers in my yard or garden. Also never saw them bloom.

If you have the space I think they are a wonderful addition to a gardening experience. I get more comments and questions about this garden than any other. But I have 4 acres and the space to designate the space. But.........

At my old house I had a small suburban garden. I had the yellow blooming cactus at the edge of the yard around the mail box with a yellow rosebush, spring bulbs, iris, and daylily Stella. It was my yellow flower blooming mailbox design. I had people stop and take pics of that garden.

I had blooms all seasons. Yellow spring bulbs, yellow spring blooming iris, yellow rose, yellow cactus, yellow daylily.

I say this to say that it can be done in a large or small area but it depends on what is appealing to the gardener. I like something different and nothing is more different than people that do not realize that cactus can be grown in a zone that get a foot of snow or more in the winter.

I became a landmark on my street. They told people they lived 3 houses up from the yellow cactus garden. lol

Joe Pye weed is a great plant in the right place, beautifully suited to swamps and wetlands. It is a very large plant with a robust presence. It has an appealing scent. I don't think it would be well-suited to a small English garden - it's a space eater.
I don't care if people don't like the plants I grow or the way I garden. Because our gardens are public, we see the gamut of visitors. Most are kind. Occasionally, there is a gardening snob wandering through, but I have learned to ignore them. But everybody's garden is different and their experience of any given plant is bound to reflect that difference.
I didn't invent any of the plants I grow, so I cannot take it personally if anyone dislikes a particular plant. Also, my own tastes change. Plants I loved 15 years ago may now be banned from the garden, or they just might be working their way back into my own top 10 list.

I love my Joe Pyeweed. However, though I bought a dwarf variety from a reputable source it grew well over 6 feet (and boy did that look silly in the middle of my garden bed). I've moved it to the back and next year am going to try the advice I received of cutting the stems back by half (to just above a whorl of leaves) in June.

UPDATE

These 2 "Blue Cushions" easily survived the problematic winter and spring 2013. I moved them in late April and all was fine for this past summer. Although they were healthy they were probably not as floriferous as they could be due to a less than full sun location. I will give them one more season in this same spot just to be sure.

My lavender did beautifully this summer. I separated some of the seedlings and moved them to empty spots. All have survived and are flourishing. I do have quite sandy soil, so they certainly have excellent drainage. I hand water in times of drought and to help new plants get established, but generally skip over the lavender. They get only rain and whatever water happens to reach them from their neighbors. I never do soil tests, I just grow what seems to be happy. I do mulch with shredded leaves, mostly to dispose of the leaves. The lavender is in total sun from sun up to sun down, unless the mailbox throws any shade. Maybe sun exposure is more important than we've discussed. I have always grown lavender where it never has any shadow thrown anywhere close to it, so it gets every possible ray of sunshine.

Martha

They are beautiful!

Of course wonderful color.

I was blown away by a2zmom's stand of Kniphofia "Alcazar" she picture posted in August 2012 (see link below).

I went out and bought two of them late in the season but neither of them made it through this past winter :(.

(Earlier this summer I planted a Kniphofia "First Sunrise"; no flowers but it seems healthy and so I have my fingers crossed that it will make it through this winter).

Here is a link that might be useful: Torch Lily from last year

The best choice of moving into a new(to you)garden, is to not do anything drastic until you know what you have to deal with. It is very tempting to tear it all out. Al

Hi monben, congratulations on your new home! It sounds like you have some gardening experience and a plan. I think you are on the right track. YouâÂÂve already identified those you want to keep, and those you want to move and add. YouâÂÂve decided to amend the soil. I would guess that any major amending would create a problem with your drip water system and so maybe you are trying to amend in just the areas where you are adding new plants which wouldnâÂÂt disturb the soil level. I think if I had two roses that were doing well, I wouldnâÂÂt want to dig them out and move them either.

If you are wanting to add agastaches, penstemons, lavender and ice plants and depending on how much clay soil you have there, it is important to make sure you have the right conditions for those plants. I have loamy clay soil and I have always thought it drains well, and I also mounded the soil in the bed but when I added agastaches and penstemons etc, they did okay but do not really thrive and lots of them have petered out over time. They really do need well draining soil, especially over winter in zone 4/5. IâÂÂve had trouble with agastaches and penstemons that didnâÂÂt come back in the spring and IâÂÂm in zone 6.

If you really want to not have to come back and make corrections, you might think about taking a soil test this fall. See if there are any amendments that are better off being added now. I would think it is too late in zone 4/5 to dig up and move existing plants. Even here in zone 6, I stopped moving plants awhile ago. I do plant potted plants even through November as long as I can dig in the soil.

If you want to improve your soil and give a little added protection over the winter, you could add a layer of chopped leaves and grass clippings on the surface of the bed and water them in and leave them until the spring. You will find an increase in earthworms for your trouble.

I would wait for spring to move the Peony and Geraniums. And just prepare the hole where it is going, and take as much soil with it as possible when you move it, water it in well and give it some shade for 3-7 days and it should work fine. I donâÂÂt grow Peonies, but if they are supposed to be in full sun, IâÂÂd make sure you give them that in the new location.

Sounds like a lot of fun, good luck!

Some say a lot of things, but a plant rooted in water grows just as well as a plant rooted in anything else.

Roots are roots. I've rooted cuttings in water and they ended up growing just fine when planted.

The hybrid asters commonly found in garden centres are usually the dwarf cultivars such as Wood's Light Blue, Wood's Pink, Sapphire, Prof. Kippenburg, etc. They can get leaf diseases during rainy summers, but are otherwise reliable fall bloomers, if the rabbits don't eat them first. Most of them are hybrids of several species asters, including the New York aster.

Thank you. I'll give them a try!

mad_gallica - thanks for that soil info which would explain my utter failure to grow lavender where I am. Sounds like the fact that my soil is lovely, well-drained acid sandy loam is probably a dead giveaway why I've had zero luck growing it here except in containers. It always helps to accept what you can change and what you can't.

I'm going to disagree with the above.......it is ALL about drainage and winter moisture conditions with only a slight impact from soil pH :-) First, most plants tolerate a pretty wide range of pH and lavender fits into this tolerance range as well, although not as wide a range as many other plants (6.5-7.5 is preferred). The PNW is one of the largest commercial lavender growing areas in the US and we have naturally acidic soils. Lavender thrives here, despite having rather wet winters. The key is to ensure good drainage - I can't imagine lavender dealing with clay soils at all regardless of pH. The only time hardiness is at issue here is if fast drainage is compromised, like in clay soils. (and excessive fertility and too frequent irrigation, but that's another issue).

As to transplanting now, in zone 5 I'd opt to wait until spring if possible. Lavender is marginally hardy inground in your zone and planting this late in the season does not provide sufficient time for the plant to become established before cold weather sets in and increases the chances for cold damage/death over winter.

Thank you guys. Yes, it is Montauk Daisy. What a display this guy has -- and it's October 18. Love it. Thank you again.
Pat

And they're highly deer resistant. Easy to take cuttings in spring.

When my folks were alive, they lived in Michigan's U.P. and I visited them from Chicago. They had five acres of woods, and I decided to dig up some ferns to use in my shade garden back home. Boy, did THAT turn out to be a backbreaking project! Those babies did NOT want to leave Michigan!

I didn't get as many as I had hoped for, but a few years after they were planted in Chicago, under some juniper trees, they were MAGNIFICENT. One of the things I hated most about leaving my Chicago garden was leaving the ferns from Mom and Dad's woods in Michigan. But Kansas is really the last place they'd want to be. (I'm not too crazy about it either!)

Sharp shovel=good. DH using it to shovel rock right after you sharpen it=Grrrr..

When I'm picking plants for a bed, I usually try and find the ones that are variegated or have leaves other than run-of-the-mill green.

Variegated varieties: Solomon's seal, Jacob's ladder (touch of class), obedient plant, heliopsis (Lorraine sunshine), brunnera (variegata), lysmachia (alexander), toad lily, phlox (nora leigh)

Silver leaves: lamium (I find it to be somewhat invasive), brunnera, pulmonaria, lychnis (gardners world), bleeding heart (burning heart)

Dark leaves: cimicifuga, lysmachia (purpurea), eupatorium (chocolate), ligularia, lobelia (queen Victoria), penstemon, euphorbia (bonfire)

Chartreuse leaves: bleeding heart (gold heart), spiderwort, (sweet kate) columbine (leprechaun's gold), agastache (golden jubilee), lamium

Hostas and heucheras are pretty snazzy too, and epimediums change color in the fall

Also, check into native plants - they're beautiful and butterfly magnets!

With ornamental grasses you can have tons of color at this time of year...and motion & sound as well! I adore them... and there are some for shade, humid areas and more! (Asters look fabulous with them.) Grasses can be red (Japanese blood grass) gold, brown, green, chartreuse.....variegated (such as Morning Light). Tall, medium or short. Heucheras offer various colors as well and Allium Ozawa blooms at this time of year as does Verbena bonariensis. I agree that foliage is autumn's good friend as far as color is concerned! And Amsonia hubrectii (mentioned above) is truly to die for....

This post was edited by gardenbug on Wed, Oct 16, 13 at 22:01