13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
"...the smaller picea are not easily available and almost too small ie get lost unless they are in the border, the larger ones....well just get too large..."
Bingo! Too small or too large, lol. That's the dilemma! Well, at least for me!
Beautiful pics, nhbabs, of a beautiful yard. If I had that kind of room I wouldn't be so worried!
:)
Dee
I started incorporating conifers in my garden to give me color and structure during those months when there isn't much going on. Those months when everything looks brown and dead, like now and early spring. After I started adding them I realized that I prefer foliage to flowers and now prefer to buy things that will give me more than a month's worth of beauty.
My 1.25 acre parcel is upland savannah and the soil is well-drained sandy loam. Many trees have been removed over the past 10 years, or thinned, but there are still numerous large canopy trees and they're spaced out in such a way that there is hardly any full sun, but lots of partial sun.
There are a lot of perennials that do pretty well with partial shade with medium moisture - including wetland plants with some supplemental water during dry spells. If there's really a drought though, I can't keep up on watering everything, and the wetland plants tend to suffer and sometimes go dormant or experience a bit of dieback.
I add organic matter like compost, leaf mold, etc. to all the gardens about once a year, to improve moisture retention and it helps with both sandy or clay soil. I've hand dug many garden beds, and pulled out tons of roots, rocks etc., but in more recent years also use the lasagne or sheet composting technique which is much less labor although it's slower to build a bed.
The biggest challenge under these conditions is growing veggies and the heat/sun-loving annuals like Sunflowers, because they really perform best under full sun. I would love to have great big veggie and butterfly garden, and daylily and cutting gardens too, LOL, and I suffer from a terrible case of sun envy.
You're right...I'm right down the street from Clemson, in northern Anderson! I was planning on volunteering at the botanical gardens to learn more about plant propagation - maybe I'll learn more there!
Color isn't too important...because I've got 2 side areas with nice amounts of sun and I'll get my color there. But for those patches under the trees...I'll definitely consult the Master Gardener. I would like to take the course myself! :)
I have seen these types of flowers in the neighborhood but I never knew what they were. These are not the kind of anemones that I am familiar with (anemone coronaria)
Can I ask a silly question? What are these types of anemones called so I know what to look for in the garden center? Do you by them as tubers or plants?
Morz8, I do spray, but it's been raining a lot lately, and I admit I do not spray the things they're really not supposed to like, such as G. macrorrhizum. I know they usually love roses, but not rugosas, no? Anyway, whatever, they eat everything if they feel like it. I am just frustrated!
Miclino, you have my sympathy. It's even worse when you just planted it!
why bother posting.. if you are going to answer your own question.. lol
see link ..
yes.. they are all over the place.. pretty cool.. in my book ... often wondered.. as i obliterated one with the riding lawnmower.. if breathing the dust in.. would kill me.. rhiz???
ken
ps: dont need no stinkin camera ...
Here is a link that might be useful: link
Most puffball mushrooms are completely edible......and are considered very tasty. Obviously, if harvesting for food you want to gather them before they start sporing, but the spores are harmless also. No fears, Ken!!
FYI, they tend to produce spores in abundance - the giant puffball mushroom is alledged to contain 7 trillion spores in each puffball.
Cutting back in fall is sort of out of vogue in the gardening world right now. But I think if it were really catastrophic for perennials, it wouldn't have survived for so long as a practice. There are certainly advantages to it, especially when it comes to preventing disease/fungus/rodents. I think it is just a matter of preference. DiSabato-Aust's recommendation to cut back heavy flowering perennials in late summer but not for winter comes from the work of Hansen and Stahl in their 1993 book Perennials and Their Garden Habitats. I do not know if they tested their theory or if it is just a theory with no data to support it.
DiSabato-Aust does caution that if you do cut back, to only cut back within 2-3" inches of the ground because some of the basal buds for next season do develop slightly above or at ground level. Not sure if this applies to Coreopsis or not.
I also grow bulbs in my perennials beds so I usually cut back in very early Spring and often before new growth comes from the perennials -- which is not exactly what is recommended -- but it hasn't caused any problems so far.
Best of luck,
Scott
Agree, Scott, it is a matter of "preference", or, perhaps should be (sure you would agree) of "informed preference".
Must say I'm a bit sensitive to anything approaching top-down pronouncements in gardening, "abhominable magenta" (viz. Gertrude Jekyll) moments!
Love the early spring bulbs. It's unfortunate that our voles/meadow mice feel the same way!
Charlie.
Does the area get almost no direct sun? One side of my house is like that - it gets a shot of sun along the edge in the early morning, and in mid-summer, when the sun is high, it gets a little more, but right by the house, there is no direct sun at all. Which is why it's full of hostas and ferns. I don't know if there would be enough sun in your corner for many of the grasses.
Your soil looks good, and you've got a spigot right there, so perhaps you could think about putting an oak-leaf hydrangea in there for your big plant, perhaps in front of the window by the corner. They are hardy in our zone 6, and are beautiful all year - my neighbor has a couple in a corner much like yours and they are gorgeous - flowers, great fall coloring, and tough - much more architectural in appearance than the macrophylla hyrangeas (you know, the Mother's Day ones). They do get large if you don't prune them back every year or so, but that would be all to the good.
If you want to avoid shrubs of any kind there, you could get some of the really big ferns, like Royal Fern or Cinnamon Fern (that's what I've got with my hostas) - they get to be 4 feet or so and look quite Jurassic - and fill out the lower bed with smaller ferns, hostas, or other small shade-tolerant plants.
Whatever you decide, I do envy you having a blank slate - have fun filling it up!
is that a dryer vent.. ??? .. whats the patio stone on the left ...
i think you need to build a retaining wall .. just a couple bricks deep ... ... to reduce the hill.. add some good soil.. make it about 5 feet out from the house and around the corner .. and then figure out what you want to do across the woodshop ..
THEN FIGURE OUT WHAT TO PLANT ....
ken ...
ps: spring will tell you if you killed the wisteria or whatever it was ...
I had a huge elephant's ear plant in a pot in my shade garden this summer. I cut off the leaves and took it out before frost, expecting it to have a tuber. (It was purchased from a garden center.) Lo and behold, just little roots! I'd like to save it for next summer, so I plopped it in a smaller pot and put it in my basement in hopes it will stay alive in a semi-dormant state. It will have a little light from a small window and I plan to water it a little every couple weeks. Does this sound like a plan for success?
Yes, those are gomphrena, I think it was qis red originally and has reseeded here and there each year. You just have to be careful to distinguish between them and young crabgass... they look similar.
They usually go till frost, mine are now looking a little worse but still ok since even when frozen the flowers keep their color.
Wow, kato, you've got some gorgeous mums there. That orange is so dense! Sorry to see you've had a fungus and lost some. I think you are probably right, that the dry hot weather over the summer stressed them.
Here are a couple of photos I took this morning. Happy to still have some color in the garden this time of year.
Agree with above.
As above, would make sure new growth-blooming shrubs such as Hydrangea paniculata are winter dormant before doing any major pruning. This can be as early as December/January/February. If it blooms on old wood (e.g. Hydrangea macrophylla), only remove the canes that are broken because buds have already formed for next Spring. See the below link for some detailed information on Hydrangea pruning.
Here is a link that might be useful: Hydrangea pruning