13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
urk, have avoided making any response to this thread as I am currently in deep daily denial about the scale and scope of tasks awaiting us in the coming months (years). 3 years ago, we completely ripped out the old home garden, rebuilt from scratch and are now enjoying the results......but (there is always a but), we also bought 5 acres of untamed neglected poplar plantation, 60 miles away from home and have also spent a decade whipping a couple of allotments into shape. Thing is, neither house, not allotments belong to us - they are leased from the local council....and their temporary nature is what led us to make the leap into buying a bit of land. For various reasons (mostly planning and zoning) woodland is the way to go in the UK (especially if you want to actually live, at least some of the time, on your land (and we do). So, while we would dearly love to settle back and enjoy the results of hard work, we know that a heap more is coming down the pipe, in the post, on its way. Frankly, the idea of attempting to transplant a decades plant collecting, huge investment in time and money (which, of course, we do not have) has got me stuck in a limbo of indecision. Starting small, and guided by economics, sowing seed is going to be the way forward (5 acres to fill!!) and embarking on a steep and utterly new learning curve is simultaneously thrilling....and terrifying.
Foxgloves, 100s of them, ramping campanulas, umbellifers (although the wood is stiff with them already) epilobium, meconops.....the greenhouse is stuffed with pots and trays while we desperately jiggle our time between Cambridge (genteel, civilised, a sort of Boston, Mass) and Norfolk (an English Iowa or Idaho, fields and fields of flat fen and huge skies). Hopelessly disjointed, living day-to-day (planning has never been a major strength) and trying not to think further ahead than the nest day or so - both therapeutic and terribly anxiety inducing, in turns.
No wonder we are a bit stalled.
Thanks Karin for the details of how you are creating the walls. Not that I'm planning any wall building at any point in the near future (g), but I am always curious about how things are done. So I will just enjoy watching you build yours. :-) And yes, you absolutely have to go out the next day and see if what you've accomplished is standing up to scrutiny. And I do hate that when you see something amiss the next day!
Campanula, that feeling of being overwhelmed is the worst! I think when I am at that point, (often, and for a lot less reason than yours), I have to get to the point of accepting the situation the way it is, then do my best. You know that old saying...'grace to accept the things that can't be changed, courage to change the things that can, and the wisdom to know the difference.'
Each day you can only do just so much and having done that to rest and let go the rest. Maybe there is some resource for more help with all this work?
gardenweed - beautiful pictures. Love the walk-way garden! And such a nice setting with all the woods behind your house. Thanks for the inspiration.
aseedisapromise & barb - thanks for the iris information! I have a few very small ones that were just beautiful last year but I don't think they ever bloomed this year... They bloomed in April/May last year and, bearing in mind we had a slow start to the season this year, I never saw any flowers on them. I'd love to get some big irises and I just love the yellows! Thank you!
BlueBird - what a great mass of coreopsis! It looks great and I totally agree about the foliage - such a different shape than most.
a2zmom- love the yarrow and kent bells. I have Adenophora Tashiroi which are somewhat similar to the campanula. I think I chose these because they were slightly taller but I wanted either Kent Bells or Sarastro. Do you find you have to stake the flowers?
I'd love to try and work Ligularia britt-marie crawford into the mix, even though flowers are somewhat similar to my heliopsis.
Normally Kent Belle does not need to be staked. This season however with the continual flash floods, the poor plant just couldn't stand up to the onslaught.(It also browned out very quickly as a result). Normally very trouble free - increases slowly, doesn't seed (I've had the plant for 10 years and got one seedling), deer bypass it and quite hardy.
Last year, maybe mid summer (in horrendous heat and humidity) I wanted to move some iris, so I plowed ahead and then after digging them up lost my get up and go and so set them aside until I could get them planted. Fall rolled around and I really did mean to get them in the ground....hmmm...didn't happen, so when bringing in some dahlias and cannas in late fall, I tossed the now pathetic looking iris tubers into the container of dahlias and cannas and stuck them in the basement in a fairly cool room. This spring I almost tossed the poor shrivelled up iris which still had the brown crispy leaves hanging on. Instead I set the tubers in a shallow pan of water out in the yard and ignored them. I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained! :-) When I looked at them about a week or so later, they had plumped up and had big white roots growing out of the tubers. I would love to say that I planted them straight away, but I was then starting a complete overhaul of the garden they would go into, so they sat for another few weeks. By this time they had nice green leaves. I finally got them in the ground about three weeks ago and they are doing great.
Daylilies?... well in doing the overhaul of that garden this spring, I took a shovel and "sliced off" a piece of my 'anzac' daylily. I gave away a big piece but the smaller piece that broke off got tossed beside a shrub. The shrub leafed out a bit more and I forgot the piece of daylily for a few weeks....okay about four!. Last Saturday I found it and not only did it look fine, but had produce two stems with lots of buds on each, so I took it to my son for his new garden.
This post was edited by greylady-gardener on Wed, Jul 10, 13 at 6:55
I have 2 of them - one has very pale, glaucous foliage (pinnata sub.sp neapolitanus) while the other is a deeper green with brighter yellow button-like flowers (S.incana?) It is usual to cut the little flowers off (they are frequently kept tightly trimmed, practically topiaried) but I like to leave mine - they do grow well in poor dry soil, full sun, and do well with lavender and thymes. Like lavenders, it does need shearing back every season (and you can cut quite hard to keep it neat). It also makes quite a good hedging plant (a substitute for box). Not spectacular but a deeply useful and versatile shrub for a mediterranean type climate.
I don't know if I will get any seeds from these since the interior of the flowers were so packed with petals. It might have stopped pollination. If there are seeds I will put some in my seed starter next February. I'll have to wait two years to see what they turn into. If I get seeds I will send them out to anyone who would like to be involved in the experiment. I will also have to come up with some kind of system to support the individual flowers. They are too heavy for their stalks and they are all bent over where they connect to the main stalk.
Must be one of those power plants. ;^)
How about this drama. The gulf fritillary caterpillars often climb to the brick overhang to enter their next life stage. The passion vine obviously wanted to extract a bit of revenge during it's immobile period. But just as the branch grew long enough to send a tendril reaching for it...the butterfly emerged this morning and escaped!
Nice! I've picked up a few pieces of pottery over the years at TJ's, some things better quality than others but can't be the prices, especially when they mark stuff down. I love TJ's - worth hunting through the junky stuff to find the treasures, especially cookware, high-end purses/shoes.
Earlier this spring I saw a "Golden Shadows" dogwood at a nursery. It was stunning. I came an inch from impulse buying it on the spot but it would grow much too large for any free spot I might have had.. I wonder how much shade it can take and still do its stuff?
Anyways with all this rain 'woody', this is the perfect time for planting!
This post was edited by rouge21 on Tue, Jul 9, 13 at 5:54
rouge - we're certainly going to find out how much shade the Golden Shadows can take! The place it'll be going is under white pine canopy as well as under the old spruce canopy from the trees in the neighbour's yard with the ugly shed! I'll plant it a bit to the left so it'll get some light from the break in the canopy near where the Wolf Eyes dogwood is.
It's going to be interesting to see how dry the ground is when we plant. That big T-storm in Toronto yesterday didn't affect us here - we only got 11mm. The evergreen tree canopy in the 'golden' area sheds a lot of water so it takes a long, hard rain to really soak the ground under there and we haven't had one of those in about 3 weeks although we've had a reasonable amount of lighter rains.
I hope you weren't on that GO train yesterday!
I can't tell if the little guys are E. purpurea either, they do look very similar but not quite!
I think your plan to pot up some seedlings and put them in a mostly shady spot will work fine. Echinacea seedlings are pretty durable, but I would be gentle with roots and of course keep them moist and give them a little diluted liquid fertilizer every couple weeks.
I have some Ech seedlings sowed in late May, sprouted throughout June, and will probably plant them out around late August, when it starts to cool down at night. They hopefully will establish and over-winter okay, as long I keep them well-watered.
Thanks for all your responses. I may have to wait until fall, just because I don't have time to pot hem up. Plus, my husband has been mentioning how nice the yard looks without all my wintersowing pots and jugs sitting around. I guess I will wait for fall and move a bunch of things all ata the same time.
Martha
I have some of my GA in what could be considered deep shade and although these particular specimens do not grow as vigorously as those receiving more light they still do fine enough i.e. bright leaves with flowering in later August and beyond. (As all of you know I love this particular Persicaria. It is just too bad that it is often the frost which shuts down this plant while still in flower).
This is a stinker (Brise d'Anjou)! I planted two this spring and they did not even make it to July. They were in partial shade where I have Gaura, hosta, and creeping Lysimachia. They just melted... and it hasn't even been particularly hot this summer.
Whether or not your Echinacea/coneflower comes true from seed, it's always an experiment and you may or may not be pleased with the visual results. I've grown so many Echinacea cultivars from seed via winter sowing and after a few years have decided to just plant whatever seedlings sprout, let them grow and allow the critters that enjoy the nectar take it from there. They seem to know how to go on from that point.
My goal has never been what's only pleasing to my eye but what sustains wildlife. If the view also gives me pleasure, I consider that a side benefit. The older I get, the more easily I'm pleased with my garden.
Of all the seed strains and misc Echinacea I am growing, the earliest bloomers this year were Pow Wow Wild Berry and Primadonna White. However, now many other Echs are coming along.
Echinacea cross-pollinates a lot so the seedlings of your light pink plant probably will not seed true, but you might get something similar. The seedlings I've gotten from assorted hybrids (like Summer Sky and Sunrise) did not seed true, and generally get quite a bit a variation in the seedlings that reseed in the gardens.
The seedlings I get from the seed strains bought at Swallowtail seem to seed true and I assume they are developed for more consistent results. I like that because I can plant them where they're shown off to their best, hopefully.
Right now I've got 3 or 4 Echinacea 'Primadonna White' seedlings (3rd year "seedlings" that is), in the front of a bed where they are taller than the perennials behind them. They ended up being taller than expected, so I'll move and replace them with the new 'Baby Swan' seedlings, which are supposed to be a short white at
This post was edited by terrene on Mon, Jul 8, 13 at 21:11
zooba72 - Spring or fall are the recommended ideal times to transplant perennials. The middle of July is certainly not optimal transplanting season but if you need to move things now, there are ways to minimize the risks of them dying. Things transplanted into containers need to be sheltered/protected from harsh weather so if you have a north-facing or other area where they'll be out of the sun most of the day your chances of having better success are greater.
Sorry to rain on your parade but 12" containers are rather small to grow hosta or iris year-round. I don't grow miniature hostas--most of mine are mid-size--and there wouldn't be sufficient room in a 12" pot for the root ball, let alone enough growing medium to sustain them. That said, I've got smaller hostas growing in larger containers that have come back year after year. Most were grown from seed via winter sowing.
You don't identify what sort of iris you're growing but Iris Siberica/Siberian iris quickly form a very large clump in the ground. Bearded iris don't have massive or deep root systems in my experience but I question whether your pots would provide them with sufficient area in which to thrive.
I'd suggest you post your USDA hardiness zone in your signature/login since that will provide folks with answers to your questions that are likely to more specifically meet your needs.
I have many clumps of Siberian Iris that can be divided and put into the pots. I also have a lot of very large Hosta which also could be divided. I wouldn't try putting anything large in these pots. I'll get something started and then transplant to the ground the following year or so. I'll give it a shot and see what happens. I appreciate the info, Thanks