13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
Don't abandon gardening in front of your house, just because of perceived problems. Check out this website, as well as many others on the net to give you some good tips. The key to front yard gardening, including boulevard planting, is choosing the right plants. Don't plant anything expensive (at least in the beginning) until you see what sort of damage you might get. To discourage people picking the flowers, make them less tempting. Plant some grasses, low sedums, low bulbs such as crocus, etc. I have good luck with daylilies, narcissus, and many, many other plants.
Here is a link that might be useful: boulevard gardens
Sorry your question hasn't been answered....
I have zero knowledge of this plant or when to harvest seed. Looking at a picture of the seedhead online, I would think that as soon as the prickly "burrs" turn brown and fall off/are easily removed from the stem when you try they are ready.
What is your zone/climate? Cuz' the seeds won't likely be viable if they have been frosted or sitting in the snow and wet for any period of time.
Hopefully someone with knowledge of this plant will come along to help. I thought I would take at least a stab at it since your question has been unanswered for so long ;-) You could also re-post this question on one of the seed forums here on GW, they might have more info.
Ps. not sure if you are intersted, but the link below provides great seed germinating info. Your Acaena is at the top...
CMK
Here is a link that might be useful: Tom Clothier
My GArrow does really well with very little direct sun....let's call it filtered sunlight. (In fact I had a couple in a location receiving 4 hours of direct afternoon sun and they wilted badly.)
This particular persicaria is very well behaved i.e. non spreading and say 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet.
The bright foliage just lights up a darker corner of a garden. I know I have posted (too) many pictures of a large clump of mine on GW...I just don't recall which thread. In any event see below for probably the same picture taken in August from this past season (2 plants).
Wisteria is a common subject of bonsai - try doing a Google image search on that. There are some amazing wisteria bonsais out there!
A couple of other pieces of advice:
They need very sturdy support. Both of ours needed additional support at the five year point. Not long after the Japanese wisteria bloomed this spring we got a windstorm that broke the wooden support pole off at ground level! The wisteria is now supported between two angle-iron posts painted dark olive green and connected together with metal tie rods that also run through the remains of the wooden post (which can't be removed as it it tightly gripped by the twining stems!) The Chinese wisteria was originally supported between two lighter metal posts but also needed an angle-iron support as a sort of third leg at the five year point. The regular pruning makes for a dense, bushy plant that gives the wind a lot to push on! I recommend that you use one or more sturdy angle-iron supposts when you plant a wisteria. I'm a member of the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society in the UK) and I remember reading an article on wisteria in the member magazine that said almost all Victorian-era surviving wisteria trees have an iron stake in the middle of their trunks (i.e. the tree has engulfed the stake - so one needs to take care if sawing down an old wisteria tree!)
The other piece of advice - always remove any seedpods you see - easiest to see after the leaves drop... Otherwise in the first warm days of spring the pods will open explosiively and fire seeds around! So you'd then have seedlings to contend with. (I did a germination test on the first seeds the Chinese one produced - I got 25-30% germination after the pods had spent the winter on the tree....) So now I make sure that I remove all seedpods.
It sounds like you have a good background for pruning and training a wisteria. Good luck....
After the windstorm:
Standing up again:
Same advice as others have already put out there, just wanted to add that transplanting shouldn't be a problem. I moved mine sometime really late in the year (november?), it ended up being bare-root when most of the soil fell off, next spring a late freeze killed every last flower and foliage sprout, it resprouted in June and then went on to flower in July.... and I never did water, even with a very dry spring. I guess you can see how it becomes invasive!
Unless I'm trying to gain some height or width I usually trim back every sprout to about 3-4 buds during the summer. This needs doing about once every 2-3 weeks :) I never prune in the winter even though most sources recommend it.
Here's my shrubby tree last summer after its winter transplant ordeal. Please ignore my unmown "wildflower meadow"
This thread has been great fun to read! Those covers would be toast in any winter where we might get 3-4' of snow or an ice storm. And to think they now come with christmas lights built in to draw even more attention to them.
There are many shrubs that I've "thought" about purchasing knowing they would need some protection. I do suffer from a fairly bad case of zone envy every now and then, but more often than not, I put the idea out of my head and admire the shrubs in catalogs, online or in someone else's southern garden.
Now, if there were in fact a chocolate tree (mswngal, love that idea!)that could sprout a supply of Dove Dark all season, I would sign up for that and baby it year round no matter what it took!
As for those horrid burlap-wrapped shrubs, we just watched A Nightmare Before Christmas and those things look like the boogeyman in that movie!
I grew it from seed via winter sowing a couple years ago & it came up the last two growing seasons. Germination from seed was prolific. I liked it for the delicate, lacy flowers + foliage--made a nice contrast with bigger-leafed perennials. I don't normally water my garden except for things that really need extra moisture beyond what Ma Nature provides and it never showed signs of needing a helping hand to thrive.
Re loosetrife: purple loosetrife is an agressive, invasive plant that colonizes wet areas and is no longer available from legitimate nurseries. Gooseneck loostrife, an entirely different plant, is very agressive in your garden, but will not take over the wild. And which do you have?
Hi lacyvail - there's been quite a discussion on the id of this 'Loosestrife'. We still don't have a definitive id.
Here is a link that might be useful: Which 'Loosestrife'?
Not true eric_oh...at least not in Canada. There are many more factors that are taken into consideration in determining plant hardiness zones (Canada). And I quote from the AGRICULTURE CANADA website:
Agriculture Canada scientists created a plant hardiness map using Canadian plant survival data and a wider range of climatic variables, including minimum winter temperatures, length of the frost-free period, summer rainfall, maximum temperatures, snow cover, January rainfall and maximum wind speed.
And right now with these cold winter temperatures there is an unusual lack of snow cover.
Blazing Star is liatris, not a lythrum, not a lysimachia :)
Similar in appearance and also easy to confuse could be Verbena hastata: blue vervain, and Epilobium: fireweed. If going by memory, you may need a photo of your plants when growth begins for accurate ID.
And here I very much like my "Yellow Loosestrife" (Lysimachia punctata). For sure the foliage is nothing to write home about but in bloom there are tons of flowers (actually quite unique i.e. little yellow star like blooms with a light orange centre) lasting 3 to 4 weeks. I have it in a small 'medallion' garden surrounded by interlock so it does not spread. Here is a picture of it from June 2011.
This post was edited by rouge21 on Sun, Jan 20, 13 at 6:04
Yes, Wellspring, I have definitely been a path dreamer for awhile now. And I still have a good portion of the garden that needs a new pathway, but it's on the back burner for now.
I did find a photo of our pathway when we finished it. It's pretty simple and we used rocks to create a little bed there that simply has ferns and other shade perennials in it for now. I have thoughts of adding something vertical there, but who knows when. Another thing I like about the path is that it is under a high canopy of a large Maple tree and near some full grown spruce in the neighbor's yard, so we get a nice layer of needles and that layer of pollen that falls off the tree in the late spring, and it then makes the bark mulch look very natural and part of the landscape. You can see it is easy to navigate with a four foot wide gate that allows for the wheelbarrel etc. I couldn't find a photo of the pavers on the other side of the gate yet, but I'll look again. I need to catch up with my photo labeling.
My question is, does this path get enough traffic to rule out grass? Or is the situation too shady to rule out grass? I have some grass paths, with garden beds on either side. It takes about 15 seconds with the lawn mower to maintain them.
Hi, purple. Thanks for the help on both posts. I don't know that I did smell number four? Is it good or bad? This thread has been immensely helpful for me because a few of those plants (especially the lilac) really puzzled me last summer. I have two other lilac trees and they are so wildly different from this one. I thought it might be some weird variety of crepe myrtle. The lilacs all smell divine. As do the peonies of course.
The viburnum smells great also. I'm glad to know its name so that I can learn how to prune it. It grows in a strange pattern.
I'm wishing that I had better pictures of the beds and not just the individual plants. Our garden is really neat.
Oh yes, #4 should smell good, there are very few that don't. That particular one looks like it smells especially good, similar to carnation probably, but better. Worth getting your tush up in the air for, I hope, predict.
Totally agree, you've got a great yard! The plants pictured all look great to me, even the grass.
#3 looks like it could be Dame's Rocket - often mistaken for Phlox. It seeds around like mad and is considered a weed. It has colonized along several highways near here, looking very pretty when it blooms.
Here is a link that might be useful: Dame's Rocket
That Phlox looks like 'Nora Leigh', one of my faves too.