13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
hmmm, named varieties of aquilegies, apart from the species and oddities such as the Barlow varieties are always on a doomed trip to general cross-pollinated randomness. They are so promiscuous, unless you go to all that bagging and isolating business, most special types will soon interbreed and lose their specific charms.
Too many busy bees (keeping foxgloves white - another doomed attempt at control).
hmmm, named varieties of aquilegies, apart from the species and oddities such as the Barlow varieties are always on a doomed trip to general cross-pollinated randomness. They are so promiscuous, unless you go to all that bagging and isolating business, most special types will soon interbreed and lose their specific charms.
Too many busy bees (keeping foxgloves white - another doomed attempt at control).
Actually there are very few dark leaved plants that are truly for the shade. Heuchera, Actaea, Rodgersia, etc all will lose color without some sun. They shadier it is, the greener they will be. Also, most of the darker-leaved plants will lose vigor in shade as well.
And as stated already, there is the color contrast thing. Want to make a yellow Hosta pop? Back it with blue-green (Kirengeshoma comes to mind), plant something fine textured and dark or medium green to the sides (maybe Chasmanthium latifolium), and front it with dark-leaved Heuchera (obsidian, gotham, etc). That one yellow hosta will nearly hurt your eyes.
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I suspect that the tall variety you have is hardy ageratum, Eupatorium coelestinum, and its arrival in your yard doesn't have anything to do with having planted annual ageratum.
In my garden hardy ageratum spreads/reseeds some, but the excess is easy to remove. I see complaints from deep South gardeners about its invasiveness, so apparently it can behave more aggressively there.
There's a few streets in my area lined with Bauhinia purpea. They look amazing for a month or so, especially in the wet years, but (like redbud) are rather nondescript otherwise. Still, a very well behaved street tree -- no sidewalk cracking, massive pollen loads, bug infestations or rampant invasiveness.
I grow the bronze-leafed rodgersia but it only starts out that colour in the Spring; by summer, it's fully green. It is a long-lived plant and not too fussy. I have it growing under a tree and it has never needed dividing. My growing season isn't long enough to produce blooms, but apparently, they aren't all that showy anyway.
I see this new introduction called Tie Dye.
Here is a link that might be useful: Tie Dye Helenium
I am going to get the new intro Ruby Tuesday this year. The perfect color to compliment my shutters! :) The reviews on this one are really good and they say 150 blooms a season. I'll take that any day! Looking forward to trying it out.
Well... I'm not nearly as far south as Georgia. I'm on the east coast, near the border of NC and VA, very near the shore. That's why I said Im in zone 8, but barely. It has been a little warmer than usual for February - really the whole winter. I have geraniums that have had flowers this whole time, and a snap dragon that didn't flower much but stayed green. Anyway, I really appreciate all the input!
I agree with flora re being careful about 'cleaning up' the woodland. I made that mistake in one area here the first year - and paid for it by weeding like crazy the next summer as all the weed seeds were now exposed to light and germinated and grew like mad! Now all leaf litter and pine needles are left to rot down in place, creating a natural duff layer that the woodland plants love. Large downed limbs or tree trunks become 'nurse logs', sheltering and feeding seedlings and young plants. So, be selective in cleaning up the woodland - i.e. remove or remediate hazards like limbs or dead trees that are at risk of falling , or tangles of underbrush that make it hard to walk about, thin out/remove unwanted splindly saplings and undesirable trees - but leave the leaf litter layer that plants and critters depend on.
Oh great stuff here. Will try and answer. Firstly, soil - it is weirdly both peaty....and sandy. It was originally an open field as late as the 1940s till early 50s, growing sugar beet. A fatal accident occurred in a drainage ditch and the original owner was grief stricken, selling it off to a company called Crown Estates, who, looking for a low maintenance crop, planted hybrid poplars. By the 1970s, the market for matches had died away and the plantation was abandoned. A later owner had the land for several years but was roundly chastised after dumping masses of hardcore and digging out a huge artificial fishing lake. He was ordered to clear the mess (which he largely did) but then left the plot for another 8 years.....when it came to us.
The land is on marshland which is vulnerable to tidal flooding (although old photos during high tides show the river inundations stopping at the woodland edge). The whole area was once dug out for peat beds and is now part of the Norfolk Broads - a huge system of man-made waterways. despite the peat, the underlying geology is chalk and consequently, is more alkaline than I would have imagined (compared to Thetford forest and the Brecklands which have thin, sandy and very acidic soil).
However, Flora, while I am keen to preserve existing biodiversity, there is very little apart from at the margins of the woodland (including, to my joy and amazement, snowdrops). Moreover, it is not really woodland by any stretch but is actually a neglected plantation of a monocrop......which gives me a degree of freedom to plant naturalised, if not entirely native species. And, in all truth, this will be my sole garden and I know I will have neither the discipline nor the passion to maintain a purely natural pallette of planting....but this does not mean I intend to run amok. Our countryside reveals the terrible evidence of irresponsible plant and animal introductions, so while there will (I hope) be hellebores, english bluebells, cow parsley, foxgloves and cranesbills, there will be no place for plants which are highly bred, sterile, or of little utility for indigenous wildlife. I am simultaneously thrilled and terrified.
The treeline starts 10metres in from the south facing boundary streams and accordingly, I have ordered white willowherb, various umbellifers, campanulas and foxgloves to make a start on what I hope will be a small hay-meadow. Unfortunately, apart from a very few tree species, there is not an abundance of local seed to collect (although I have knapweeds, scabious, silene, agrimony and meadow rue). There is a very good chance I will be able to have a stand-pipe for water as my farming neighbour grazes rare breed cattle on the marsh and has a farm next to us - with water and electricity. I can also pump water from the ditches and even the river (amazingly, I have private access to a small amount of river frontage).
Mr.Camps has had to give up work so we have time, if not money. We are both around 50ish and hope that this woodland will become our life's work, for us and succeeding generations......so we are in no hurry to do much this first year except observe, plan and sow seeds. I do have my allotments (a handy stock area) where I have my main collection of perennials and (my main love) wild roses but they are likely to be sold during the next few years. When I leased them in 2002, they were guaranteed free of development until 2012.....which seemed like an impossibly long time in the future - but here we are - developers circling and our city council is both craven and corrupt.
Without sounding overly dramatic, gardening is my life (apart from my beloved children and grandaughter, obviously) - the impetus to grow and nurture is profound and the desire for a patch of our own land surprised me by an almost visceral level of intensity. I certainly don't care for bricks and mortar to the same degree- I can face up to losing my home and living in a horsebox with equanimity, whereas a house without a space to grow is no home at all.
I thank you all for your generous and thoughtful responses and good wishes.
This product sounds like a synthetic pyrethrin derivative and not especially toxic - but among the things we don't know are how/when it breaks down and potential effects on beneficial insects like bees and some soil organisms. Pyrethrins are quite toxic to bees, and using a product that apparently has a very long duration of activity only exacerbates the problem.
Good to see you post echinaceamaniac
Your wrote: Fire Spinner...I didn't get a single bloom from it.
That was my experience as well. At least mine spread significantly last summer and *if* they make it through this tricky winter they better show me lots of flowers or I will replace them.
i tend to never fert a stressed plant ...
its already having enough trouble.. w/o you somehow burning its roots ...
if you have a decent soil.. fert is usually never a 'cure' ...
a little of this or that usually doenst hurt.. but solve your problem first..
ken
72 hours of twitchy, half-blind paranoid hallucinatory anxiety.
==>> sounds like my teenager.. on a NORMAL day ... lol
well campy.. that story gets the gold star of the day ...
sounds like it sums up that old Grateful Dead mantra: what a long, strange trip its been
all the things you peeps are talking about are annuals in MI ...
ken
Here is a link that might be useful: Sometimes the lights all shinin on me; Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip its been.
Hippie druggies not withstanding (haha), moonflower is usually grown as an annual. Datura could be also. Doubt very much if it was brugmansia, tho that could be grown in a greenhouse and brought out in the summer. One point: datura flowers are upright, while brugs hang down. Moonflower is also upright, and opens up in the evening. On a cloudy day, they could be open until nearly noon.
Never tried jimson weed myself. The idea scared hell out of me, pretty toxic. Ha never smoked pot either. I missed that whole hippie free love thing. I was busy raising kids while that was going on.
Sandy