13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

Just beautiful! Can`t grow them here in my KY. garden. Tried and failed several times. They are so beautiful. Lesley

Really lovely, Kato. Your delphinium, whatever type it is, really looks happy there. These are one of my favorite flowers but I've never been too successful with them--- more like annuals for me. Expensive annuals. :(

um, Moonflower, aka calynyction aculeatum, aka ipomea alba is the vine whereas your picture shows a datura, aka brugmansia (inoxia?) - botanists, hey! - aka jimson weed and a host of other common names.

Even the Latin nomenclature lets us down sometimes

Don't even bother trying to start the moonflower seeds unless you can keep them toasty and warm. They really won't germinate unless the soil temperatures are kept higher such as with a heat mat. Also as others have said, try sanding, filing or nicking the seed coat.

Some foxglove hybrids like the Camelot series bloom the first year from seed. But they do not reseed. Foxgloves take a couple of years of planting to get going. But after that with reseeding, the biennial nature evens out .

Some foxglove hybrids like the Camelot series bloom the first year from seed. But they do not reseed. Foxgloves take a couple of years of planting to get going. But after that with reseeding, the biennial nature evens out .

Very peaceful 'vibe' from your new artwork, Woody. :-) I like it. And it is funny that the name is exactly what your back garden theme is. Great living room window!

I do tend to purchase artwork that has a garden theme. I have one of a line of geraniums and another with a line of herbs in pots. I had one that was an abstract of an apple orchard and I have a winter scene with a large Christmas tree in the center. I also have bought ceramic birds and I use photos of the garden or landscapes on the desktop of my computer, so I am looking at those every day too.

I love your painting, Woody. Seems like it was made for that room! Now that I look around at the pictures I have on my walls, mostly framed prints, they do appear to be floral, regardless of style! I never noticed that before. About 4 years ago I collected a large number of leaves from my Ginkgo tree with the intention of placing them all into a frame. I think the project got halted when I became indecisive about the matt color. I better get on that. They're stuck in a big phone book that my husband keeps threatening to throw out.

Catmint is too tall to be what I consider a groundcover. I'm not familiar with the other plant you mentioned. There are oodles of various groundcovers - do a board search and you should find some threads with suggestions.

Hello marymax,
I think it depends: what kind of soil, temperatures in your area. I came across that funny little plant when I wrote my thesis on an old garden near Berlin, botanizing/ making an inventory of all plants, on sandy soil, with dry summer and rather cold winters with little snow.

The Duchesnea grew near shrubs or in an neglected, former lawn/meadow situation.

Under those conditions, I clocked the plant rather as being resilient than competitive. So it kept going when the rest started starving or wilting.

It spreads by stolons, so that it a plus for the groundcover angle.

IMO you can hardly compare it with Catmint (Nepeta?) as the latter is showier, more competitive and much taller.

For semi-shade, and round/ near shrubs on somewhat poor soil they could work. On rich soil with good water supply I would go for something else, like Geranium or Waldsteinia.

Well, enjoy that funny faux-strawberry,
bye, Lin

I don't see the harm in moving them now - you just moved them this season, so they're not settled in yet, you won't be doing much, if any, in the way of additional root damage if you dig them now. Fall is a great time to move plants, and it's only mid-September, plenty of time to let them grow roots in the nice warm soil. Hibiscus are fairly tough plants. I still have to replant mine, which have been in garbage bags out of the ground about a month due to the patio re-build. I expect them to be fine next season. :0)

If you start some from seed where you want them to be, very often they will bloom the first year.

Thanks for giving me the courage I needed! I moved them all (without cutting the tops which are pretty green) and they haven't skipped a beat! I watered them in and then we had a soaking rain. They haven't wilted at all and I think the tops will continue to feed the roots.

I missed some, I'm sure but will look for them in the spring.

My tops are green and the transplant did not shock anything. They still would live through it regardless.

Nice capture! Those speedsters are not the easiest to keep in a viewfinder. Unfortunately, I don't get to see them very often.

The one in your picture is called White Lined Sphinx moth, another common one is the Clearwing Spinx moth, both commonly called hummingbird moths.

Here's a picture of the cat of the WLS moth, feeding on gaura lindheimeri:

And a picture of a CW feeding on phlox Delta Snow. They love phlox and verbena:

Karen

While species Agastache have been reliable performers/reseeders in my zone, I've not found that any of the cultivars have returned after a season or two. I've grown any number of them from seed via winter sowing without seeing any success in their second year. Even the volunteer Verbena bonariensis that showed up in my garden a couple of years ago has disappeared.

Normally seed-grown winter sown perennials are hardier than nursery-grown plants but I haven't found Agastache particularly hardy compared to other perennials that are more zone-appropriate.

Wish I could be of more help. I love RS and have paired it with Gaura lindheimeri in my cottage garden bed but thanks to wet conditions it hasn't prospered. In my garden the RS either gets full sun + too much water or appropriate moisture + too little sun.

The zone thing may still be a problem but check out Tricyrtis hirta/toad lily. Mine are blooming now in both full shade and part sun--might work for you. Missouri Botanical Garden website rates it hardy to Z4. The flowers are speckled purple & white. Oh, and the bees love them.

I've seen many posts on this forum on how difficult it is to keep agastache going in cooler wetter climates. I have Black Adder and Blue Blazes and love them, but I live in the Southwest where agastaches are everywhere.

How about salvia? There are many beautiful deep purple/blues that would make a striking contrast with the heleniums and rudbeckia. I've grown East Friesland, Marcus, May Night. All are hardy to Z5.

Or lavender - Hidcote or Munstead are both striking deep blues. I grew Hidcote in Z5 and it came back reliably every year.

If a shrub would be acceptable, caryopteris Dark Knight is a vibrant deep blue.

None of these has as long a flowering season as RS, but all have deep color.

Cheryl

I do. I love my tumblers. I got one off of craigslist for a great price. The second one was found by the side of the road - can you believe it?! - by a friend of mine, who drove home to get some bungee cords to bring it home. I told her I would have stood next to it and called for help, lol. No way I would have left that spot. But she came back and it was still there, and she took it home and tried it for a year and didn't like it, so gave it to me. This one is even better than the first.

The first one I have is an older model - the basic drum high up on a stand that is cube-shaped, if you know what I mean. The second sits on two triangular shaped legs, which makes it much lower - the top of the tumbler is about waist level, as opposed to over my head with the older model. The newer one also has bars inside it, which help break things up when tumbling. And the turning mechanism is easier as well. It's a smaller gear inside a larger one - I think of spirograph even time I turn it, lol, which probably just dated me, lol - but it is easier to turn.

Anyway, neither of these came with a manual, and I don't use them to "get compost in two weeks!" like the ads say. I just like them because they are enclosed, are easy to turn, and keep things on the tidy side. I don't have open piles to begin with, composting in a few black bins and a few converted garbage cans, so the tumblers are much easier to turn and unload than the cans and bins.

They are slow, but that's okay (and yet they are faster than the cans and bins). Someday I'd love to have a three-bin system, with nice big bays, etc. I sometimes drool over photos on the soil & compost forum, lol, but for now, the bins, cans, and tumblers work well for me. Especially since I use a large amount of the compost before it's completely finished.

Sorry, bonniejean, didn't mean to get so far off topic, but maybe this has been of some help to you as well.

:)
Dee

Thanks Dee for your experiences with the tumblers. I hadn't thought of looking on Craig's List either. Yes, sorry if we have gotten off topic. :-)

I love your dark pink "child" hibiscus, woody. My hibiscus include a white with red eye, a dark burgundy, and a white all grown from traded seed and a Plum Crazy. Also planted a deep red, Fireball, this spring. Surprising I don't have any pink. There is a Pink Swirl that I have my eye on at a local nursery. May pick it up if it is still there in another week or two when they have their fall close out sale.

'Fireball' is my favorite red one now - the petals seem to be thicker than on others and I think that helps make the color more intense and saturated. It's been the one that gets the most comments from people walking by.

LOL re the song.... :-)

If you trim the Sedum back in June or July, it makes it shorter and bushier and will help with flopping (blooms may be a little smaller). Or grow in a super lean dry location.

My peony foliage looks pretty good except for Duchess de Nemours. She gets brown foliage and looks crappy while the ones growing 4 feet away are fine!

Asters are just coming in, and Alma Potschke has lots of buds this year, but the lower foliage looks terrible. Aster cordifolius has the nicest foliage of all my asters.

Many hostas look good. Geranium Rozanne is a workhorse. Blooms and foliage still look great. What a long bloomer.

PG79, it's a fast growing New England aster, of medium height, called 'Alma Pötschke', the cultivar name.

Agree with you. It's my favourite aster and one of my favourite perennials!

The full cultivar name could be taken as 'Andenken an Alma Pötschke' (Royal Horticultural Society). That translates from German as "Memory of Alma Pötschke".

As you point out Terrene, when a property owner doesn't realize the plants potential to travel and doesn't keep it under control it can be a problem. I have had this plant under a large Maple for over 20 years and have nothing but good things to say about it. It was here when we moved in. But it is in an area that limits it's ability to travel. Bordered on one side by the street, a second side by the driveway and a third side by a fence, and the fourth side has a rock edge with another 15 ft of mulch on the other side of it. It takes very little effort to keep it out of trouble. It looks good all year and provides a low maintenance area under a Maple that I've been adding tiarella, ferns, hosta and epimedium to the existing spring display of crocus.

I didn't realize it's potential to travel until I tried to take some from that area and plant it in a sunnier area of the back garden, where it quickly developed from 3 small plants to a 6ft patch in one season. So it was removed after one season there. I didn't find it much harder to remove than any other plant. We pulled it all by hand and I haven't had regrowth since. I have a weedy plant in the yard that may be a Campanula that gives me much more trouble than this plant did. One I have pulled and pulled and pulled and it always returns. And nowhere near as bad as Witchgrass, which caused me to shut down my vegetable garden for 2 years because I was so sick of dealing with it.

This is what it can do in full sun here. Synonyms for thick? Congested? Inundated? Looks like a rat habitat to me.