13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
I have lots of common milkweed in my 5 acres of restored prairie and have planted swamp milkweed in my beds. I'm trying to get some of that seeded into the prairie area as well. If the temps ever warm enough to melt the snow and thaw the soil maybe we'll see some new seedlings this year. I have had a girl scout troop working through "Driven To Discover" coming out weekly for the last 3 summers, taking counts, raising caterpillars etc. Has been a lot of fun.
If a plant is healthy when I receive it, it is mine to thrive or die. I would never expect a vendor to replace something that was perfectly healthy when shipped. That is just wrong.
However ---- I ordered and received many bare-root peonies in the late fall and planted them. I have no idea what condition some were in since some didn't have eyes. Out of 13, only two sent up leaves and we had an early frost so if they don't come up this spring, I plan to complain.
Let me present a somewhat different viewpoint :-)
I've worked in the nursery industry for several decades. Every retail nursery I've worked for had a 12 month return/warranty/guarantee policy but only on woody plants - trees and shrubs. Never perennials, annuals or houseplants. And other than producing a receipt (or verifying our customer database) to ensure the plant was in fact purchased at that nursery and bringing back the dead plant (or a photo if too large to remove and return), we never hesitated to refund or credit the customer regardless of the reason.
Why? Because the actual volume of returns experienced by nurseries adopting this type of policy is less than 2% of total sales........IOW, a drop in the bucket in the larger scheme of things :-) And by adopting such a policiy the retail establishment gains far more in customer goodwill than it loses in refunded returns.
FWIW, the vast majority of returns tend to be customer's fault (don't beat me up - it's true!!)with improper watering the number one cause. Next on the list is improper planting or just unsuitable planting. My current nursery does not warranty certain borderline hardy plants so they are excluded but sold with a warning that they may not be fully hardy. Buyer beware!! And there are limits -- if our records indicate we have refunded the same plant previously, we will usually refund again but with the firm caveat that next time it's theirs for keeps!!
Since I do not buy mail order I really can't speak to their policies but I'd have a very hard time personally expecting anything bare root to be warranteed. It is just a very risky way of presenting and shipping plants under the best of conditions.
Hmmm I am jealous, my Dicentra spectablis is still under about 4 inches of snow!
This is a hardy and rugged shade perennial so your plant is probably fine. The new growth emerges with purply-crimson tips. Here's a clump that I transplanted a few years back in mid April.
I try to avoid doing spring clean up too early on my flower beds. I feel the "ratty" stuff insulated the plants over winter and when Spring weather/temps fluctuate so often, and new growth begins, the ratty stuff protects it.
With tough ole Lambs Ears however, in the early Spring I rake the spent leaves off any day it's nice and I have the time. In my garden, once established, It's difficult to irreparably damage Lambs ear.
hth,
Deb
I know, I know! Not much in the way of "beauty" will come from these bagged perennials this season. And while I don't mind waiting a year for the lush growth, my real regret is that I have no idea what I'll find until I open the boxes. (And this coming from someone who scopes out each potted plant carefully from all angles before buying it at a nursery --- turning it around, standing above it to see growth from the center, etc.) I'm usually very thrifty and not a gambler. I think this winter has gotten to me.
Molie
I read this thread because I saw a huge CostCo display and bought a few boxes last week. I haven't opened them yet --- I'd like to get closer to the end of March before I do. We have a thoroughly heated basement and no garage so they'd have to be potted up and put outside.
I'm sure that my packages will contained shriveled items too, Ken--- only I made this mistake after 40 years of gardening!
Very chagrined Molie
You may want to refer to the recent post "Bagged perennials from Home Depot", lot of replies (including mine) on there regarding this subject.
If you mail-ordered, hopefully the plants will not arrive for a few weeks, the reputable mail-order places won't start shipping to zone 5 yet. So, keep in mind the advice may change if the plants don't arrive for another few weeks or a month.
Rouge - I love shade plants! You could regret asking... :-) 'Liberty' looks like it could be a difficult one to pair something with because the edge supposedly changes from yellow to creamy white over the season. Actually last year I bought a hosta that is supposed to do that. I can't remember its name and can't find the tag. Maybe it's Liberty....! Behind the silver area in the picture above, I'm in the process of trying to make a 'golden path' leading under the pines. If you look closely at the picture above, you can see a young golden 'Full Moon' Japanese maple with golden forestgrass in front of it - those are the start of the golden path area. I planted the hosta that is supposed to change from yellow to cream edge near there to serve as a transition plant to tie the silver and golden areas together. I hope it works - it'll take a couple of years to see how it looks once the areas are more established.
I have not been keen on yellow-foliaged plants in general because they always have looked sickly to me! But I had a 'lightbulb moment' a couple of years ago on a local garden tour where I saw golden forestgrass paired with a yellow tree peony. Yellow looked great with yellow! I've been wanting to make a golden garden ever since. I started working on this one a year ago. In addition to the JM, golden forestgrass, and the transition hosta (whatever it is), there will be yellow-green heucheras (if the @#$%! rabbits ever let them survive the winter!), Sum and Substance hosta, some yellow-variegated euonymus, and anything else that strikes my fancy and has the right color! This is a bad picture of pairing a yellow-edge hosta (Francis Williams) and golden forestgrass, but shows the yellow-with-yellow that appeals to me:
Much of the shade garden is green and white. White corydalis seeds itself around and has become the main groundcover in many areas. You can see it here with the fringetree in the patio blue hosta bed. The white in the bed in the background is Persicaria polymorpha (which grows surprisingly well in shade).
And here is white corydalis (amongst other things) along the path under the oak, heading to the 'wet corner' in late May:
I like Japanese painted fern in combination with the dead-common Palace Purple heuchera - the heuchera goes nicely with the dark center of the fern.
As spring approaches, one of the things I most look forward to is the return of the trilliums. This is one of my favorite combinations:
The trilliums like the conditions here and are multiplying by both offsets and seedlings. But it will be many, many years before they achieve the look of those in the nearby woodlot:
I could go on ad nauseum! Your 'my page' says you're in Canada and I have the impression you're maybe near Toronto...? If so, you're always welcome to come check out our garden in person if that might be of interest to you.
Hope you have the good one - the evil one definitely does not need sunlight to proliferate. I chased down a bunch of them today, in virtual darkness under a group of conifers. Blooming size is easy to deal with, but I'll have to shovel out the first year 'rosettes' (as pulling them simply slicks off the leaves as mentioned above) which will be next season's bloomers.
The problem is the different species - I had Adenophora lilifolia and it is the plant from hell. It was fine for 3 or 4 years in the shade of a large shrub. When the shrub was taken out it exploded and spread. I tried to pull, cut it and sprayed with Round-up. I even sprayed it with stuff to kill brush - it just kept popping up again. Last fall I started to dig it out. Masses of thick taproots everywhere. It still resprouts from every piece of root I missed. So far I have dug over the bed three times - and still it sprouts. I have left the bed fallow, until nothing sprouts for an entire season.
Funnthsun,
Just recently my husband was telling me about some rainbow leukothoe that he saw that were very colorful and beautiful, so that's definitely something to look into. Last year I planted 3 brookside geraniums to the left of the giant bush we are considering moving. I will be interested to see how they do this year. Is there a difference in shade tolerance between the brookside and cranesbill?
Thank you both for the help!
Brookside and Rozanne are similar in most respects, including shade tolerance. The main difference is zone. You and I are both in 7b and that is the edge of Brookside, but Rozanne is rated to 8b, so a little more room there. I would say if Brookside doesn't come back for you or doesn't show enough heat tolerance, you may want to give Rozanne a go.
Well, that is great to hear! Hopefully, my regular Anouk will do as well as the Silver, then. Perfect. Now, to find a great big spot for the Phenomenal...I wonder if the neighbor will notice the new rather large plant straddling the property line? :)
IâÂÂm not sure! I was drafted this winter to be the media personâ¦.without really knowing what I can do that would not eat up all my time. I started the Lily Society Facebook page, but apart from that, the only thing I know to do is put notices on GW.
I do know a couple of people who live further away came to the fall bulb sale because they saw the listing I posted on GW last fall. They told the pres., which is probably why I got drafted.
Someone did join at the previous meetingâ¦but I donâÂÂt know how he heard about it; he didnâÂÂt say.
Lily is one obsessive gardener, and a real prima donna. But she is so lovely, and fits in so well, she can be forgiven. IâÂÂd like to think it was named after my aunt, who really was named Lily.
I will try to bump the notices down after they occur, but I had a class yesterday, got home late, and forgot.
no such thing as a dud.. per se...
too much shade will force a flowering plant into producing greenery only ... but it has to be pretty dark ...
if you slaughtered the root system.. it would not surprise me that it was spending energy on regrowing roots .. over flower ...
only time will tell if they bloom this year
ken
I know I am in the minority here but last year was it's third year in my garden and so far I've been seriously underwhelmed by it. I'm hoping it shows me some reason to keep it this summer. I'm starting to think it should have been called Emperors New Clothes.
I'm with woodyoak, what errors, there are only experiments! And hey I MEANT to dig out that plant, didn't do much anyway!
laceyvail wrote: It has the rare chartreuse color inside the lipstick red, rather than yellow, and it's spectacular in full bloom
I planted two of these Spigelia last May and although the one below is a bit 'scrawny', this being its first summer, they did give me a glimpse of their so unique flowers...awesome.