13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
There are a couple hybrid lady slipper orchids that would wow me in a garden.... Mostly because they are so hard to please but also because they are so beautiful. But unless you have a ton of money and/or no guilt in looking at a dead plant, I wouldn't recommend trying them.
Maybe I'm just stuck on native wildflowers but double bloodroot and double trilliums also come to mind as choice.
Well grown delphiniums always wow me, the bluer the better.
It also depends on if you want to wow yourself, as an experienced gardener, or non-gardener friends. Innocent visitors to my yard are speechless at BIG things - the giant hostas and tall ferns, and especially the really tall plants - New York Ironweed (7 feet), lovage and Joe Pye (6 feet), cup plant (8 - 9 feet).
It seems to me that people who don't do full-contact gardening think of plants differently - when you say "flowering plant", they think of zinnias or impatiens, while you're thinking of Itoh peonies, so when you show them your peonies, you are opening up a whole new world to them.
I think that you need to have some plants that are easy to grow, even if you are specializing in ladyslippers, so if a visitor says "oh, I could never grow that", you can say "sure you can!", and give them a seedling, just to lead them down that slippery slope.
Can anyone tell me why this happened this season? I haven't yet seen DD in this corner DD P-Cone bed except a tiny forest growing on top of all green blossoms she produced! Sigh!!!
Here is a link that might be useful: My P~Cones
I've been growing phlox for years, and every year I get a few stems that just seem a little deformed and wilted - sometimes they look so bad that I pull them out. Must be some sort of wilt that they're susceptible to. The good news is that it doesn't kill the plant and it doesn't seem to spread, so I just deal with it. I wouldn't rush to try to spray it with something or treat it with chemicals, just let it go.
And, I agree with other posters, they don't look yellow at all to me.
Yes, I had pulled that same information. Clint thinks PowWow Berry coneflower is very similar and he likes it a lot. It was supposed to have been introduced in 2011..you'd think a lot more vendors would offer it. Might have to see if PWB is available locally.
Mine looks very similar to the bottom picture. I think I had seen these on Burpee website or catalog and had planned to order them but never did for some reason. Price probably!
How does one harvest the seeds from this plant? It is such a stunning color.
wonbyherwits wrote:
My best reblooming shasta is 'Broadway Lights' (not seed grown, it is a hybrid). Shorter than most, but quite upright. The second blooms are just as large as the first. It's been blooming (with deadheading) since May 29. Today, I did a bit more deadheading and the plants look just as good with lots of blooms. 'Broadway Lights' starts out pale yellow and transforms to white,
Good information.
Cameron your description of the colour of the flower reminds me of Shasta 'Banana Creme' BUT with a far superior duration of bloom. (But) It is clearly taller than BC.
They bloom in spring and again in the fall. Mine have a few yellow leaves, but not bad. I typically cut mine back a third or more this time of year so they branch out and don't get too tall before the fall bloom.
Could yours be root bound since they're in pots?
They were looking really bad. Heavy yellowing and dropping of leaves. I should have posted a picture. I ended up cutting them way back so only the new growth in the center was left and really soaking them with water. So far they look okay. We'll see what happens. Really disappointing. These were the best plants I had in my front yard until about a month ago!
I just picked up a plant of "Fatal Attraction" (looked too cool in the nursery to pass up), now I just have to find a place to put it. After that, there are about 25 seedlings of "Echinacea "Prairie Splendor" to locate a spot for.
First, don't dig them up until you are ready to plant them - get the new place ready, then dig them up and put them right into the new spot, like in a couple minutes so they won't dry out.
Second, get them out from under the roses CAREFULLY. If they are right up against the base of the rose, you probably want to do it by hand. If the yarrow is farther out, you could take a pitchfork and wiggle it slowly under the roots of the yarrow and rock it gently until you can get it out.
I don't know of any problem in growing yarrow with your roses, as long as it's not too close, but you could check in the Roses or Antique Roses forums.
Not sure I can be of much more help. Herbaceous hibiscus are most often native to very damp or marshy soil locations, although they will tolerate drier conditions once established. Not prone to very many disease issues either, even though what you describe is more indicative of a rot. Can you post a photo?
I fully understand the climate in eastern WA - I've lived here all my life and used to be a wholesale nursery sales rep for eastern WA :-) If you are a 'real' zookeeper (as in animals and not kids :-)), didn't realize there were any of those east of the mountains so didn't make that connection.
I wonder if you have voles eating at the roots? I had terrible vole problems in the front garden since the winter of 2011, and the first sign that a perennial was compromised is that the foliage starts to wilt and die back. Then, if you lift the shoots of the plants, you can see that sections of the root ball have loosened. Also the soil gets disturbed and fluffed up by the vole digging.
Solved that problem with a castor oil mixture and hardware cloth cages around the root balls!
When you dig the roots are broken & in essence multiplying the plant as you describe. If you want to remove it entirely you'll need to dig up the entire area, which with a tree might not be possible. Easiest to dig in early spring, right?
You could try to coax more blooms with compost & water. Possibly the digging has disturbed it. They don't like disturbance & won't bloom.
OK...I planted 24 bare root astilbes back in middle spring time. They exploded in growth...dark green with the tops shooting up fast. They are still rich in color. Now with the heat, I noticed that some of the branches are dying on two of them. Yet, the rest of the plant is doing fine. Is this because the roots are not big enough yet for the whole plant, or what? they are in about 80% shade, which I believe that I need in the upstate of SC...because it can get very warm in the summer months.
If anyone has any great ideas, I would love to hear them.
Astilbe goes dormant if dry thus the brown branches, but doesn't mean the plant is dead.
In August 2010 I bought five 2 gallon pots with brown & dry Visions of Pink for $1 each at Lowe's with the hope that they'd just gone dormant because of drought at the store. I watered them well for a week then transplanted in a lasagna bed with lots of rich compost. They still looked dead.
In spring new shoots formed & I removed the spent stems. Last year's bloom show was great with the 5 plants producing numerous stems each.
I planted in 2 staggered rows with 3 in the back & 2 in the front. A photo showing the blooms just beginning to open mid July last summer (middle right).
I removed 2 of them in early spring and divided one of them for 3 plants in the entrance garden at our camp. The plants look just like the ones in my backyard even in the less rich soil. I plan to spread rabbit manure mulch this fall to ensure nice blooms next summer. U have done that for my other astilbe.
Pics from summer 2011 - Astilbe Cattleya planted spring 2009 1 gallon pot divided into 2 halves
Besides being full of pink selections (my favorite color) I love that astilbe blooms can be dried as everlastings when picked before the blooms fully open. I have had a lovely bouquet of astilbe, chives, ornamental oregano, & Lunaria money plant on my computer desk since last summer!
Well, I think that Echinacea looks sickly! Would never buy that one. Many of the new cultivars look pretty, but I will wait until they have stood the test of time.
I LOVE that people develop real passions about certain plants. I have gone crazy over plants that only a fellow nut case would appreciate!
I'm not attracted to this particular introduction, either. I chuckled when I saw it....one more homely Echinacea with a great name for marketing. Can I be an echinacea fan and a plebian at the same time?
Thank you, E.maniac...for enriching my appreciation and knowledge of an incredible genus.