13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
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
Shockwave has so far been a fantastic performer and very mildew resistant.
The flames and pixies have performed very well for me, no mildew. Great short plants.
David is a classic and a PPA winner. Nothing else needs to be said.
Minnie Pearl is one of the most mildew resistant phlox in existence. Yet most retailers don't seem to carry it despite being readily available.
I'm intrigued by 'Tiara' as it's the first double flowered phlox. Mine unfortunately didn't make it. I need to get another one.
I'm sure you all mainly want to hear about paniculata types, but 2 others I wouldn't be without:
Phlox stolonifera 'Home Fires' is a fantastic bright pink groundcover phlox for part shade.
Phlox bifida is similar to the typical creeping phlox (P. subulata) types but more clump-forming and substantial looking. GREAT plant.
I also really dig P. pilosa and P. glaberrima 'Triple Play'. 'Triple Play' has yet to bloom for me, but the variegated foliage and short habit are great. P. pilosa is the native sand phlox and a butterfly magnet (and a host for some lepidoptera... though which ones I can't remember).
The Plant Geek
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ispahan- you don't happen to have any pictures of your new phlox, do you? I'd love to see the new ones from PP nursery in Vermont. They seem to have a great selection but I think I'm too cheap to place an order myself.
I transplanted most of my phlox together into a new bed last fall. I'm hoping they put on a great show now that they are all together and in better soil. I only have a few named ones, the rest are either seedlings or no ID ones so I can't really offer any 'best phlox' comments, but Darwin's choice is starting to grow on me, mostly for the leaves, but also the flowers.
The reds just aren't happy with me and I can't seem to get a good show out of any of them..... and I also haven't found a dwarf one that I like. I understand the theory of them being better suited to smaller gardens, but really? They take up just as much square footage yet don't seem to bloom as vigorously. Plus they just look dumpy to me.
So where you infected plants on your site for more then a year?
The impatien issue is amazing. I had the most lush impatiens last year ( i was never a fan before that)... then over a few days they all lost their leaves as if it had frosted during the night. Might try the new g types next year to see what happens.
A small number of Echinacea were held over from the previous year, but those are kept in a different location and weren't brought to the retail bench until aster yellows was already present on the current season's batch. (I should clarify I'm talking my day job here, as my own nursery currently doesn't sell Echinacea)
IDM is devastating. I noticed it at work this year, it's a problem that is just appearing in WI. Indeed, from a distance before you got close enough to see the characteristics, it looked like we had a frost in August.
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-plant geek, wonderful info. Thanks much for sharing.
-Eric, Good question. Hope someone comes along with more experience that can help sort that out.
My thoughts on it...I worked at a nursery last year and the manager said some things did very poorly (arbs for one, go figure!) at over wintering because they were from CA. Not sure if there were other circumstances involved for their poor ability to overwinter (like late planting, etc).
I'm not sure how long it takes a plant to evolve enough change the hardiness and genetic makeup of it. Evolution like that takes time, but I would think awhile? Like hundreds/thousands of years, each generation passing the traits onto the next?
I would think the nursery source is something like growing hardy plants in a hothouse. Hardy plants grown in a hothouse need hardening off, but once they are they can be planted outside and survive. The cold hardines is still hardwired into them, so once they get over the initial change of temperature shock they are okay. I would imagine it would theoretically take hundreds/thousands of years of growing in that hothouse to end up REQUIRING those conditions? Just thinking out loud here I guess, lol.
I think the case of the Cercis is relating to "disjunct" plants. Populations of plants had a wider range some thousands of years ago because of warmer temps, then when things began to cool some groups developed a greater cold tolerance than those of the main populations we see today. These separate groups are known as "disjunct". Think it can also happen the other way too, some isolated groups can develop a greater heat tolerance over the years.
Guess it really all depends on where the original source it came from, if it was one of the colder or warmer groups! There was a great article about this in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Horticulture magazine...
CMK
Provenence is one of those misunderstood factors. Provenence is important if talking about wild collected material. It can make a big difference if a plant is collected at 2000' elevation and say again at 10000' elevation. The plant at the higher elevation is likely to be more tolerant of cold. Same with a wide ranging species. Collect one in Florida and one in Minnesota. Which one will (probably) be more cold hardy? Now make a selection based on that one collected in MN and grow it in FL, CA, GA, WI, or wherever. Besides acclimating to the current season (you wouldn't bring a plant from CA to WI in March and expect it to survive without protection for example) it will have the hardiness of its original provenance. So Oregon grown nursery stock of Cercis canadensis MN strain will be just as hardy in MN as nursery stock grown in MN.
Easiest thing to remember is provenance is the plants origin, not where it was grown. They're 2 completely different things.
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It is really pretty and looks beautiful mixed with the daisies. It sure looks mildew free, that is my complaint of the flocks, have tried different things, some work and some dont. I keep them because they are so tall and look great with the other shorter flowers. thank-you for the pic. Tricia
mxk3, here is a fall thread related to this same topic that might be of interest to you.
Here is a link that might be useful: Rodgersia
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.