13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

It's not what it does in your yard that's a problem with the honeysuckle. It's a true invasive, where a bird eats the berries, flies to another place and then poops out the seeds with a dose of fertilizer. In fact, that may well be where yours came from since I've never seen them for sale, though they used to be sold as ornamentals. This is a problem when the bird leaves the seeds in a wild area. I've seen meadows and wood edges filled with honeysuckle seedlings, and it's a constant battle for me on this old farm (that is mostly grown up to woods) to remove this type of honeysuckle, as well as Japanese barberry, glossy buckthorn, and Asian bittersweet to name the four worst of my invasives.

first ... black spots of mulch... are not a bad thing ... sometimes the eye needs to rest ...

i agree you have great backbones there ... and frankly ... dont need much ...

all you needed to do.. was to fill in the blank spots with some annuals ... for small flashes of color ...

you could also plant bulbs in those spaces come fall ... for another season of flower ...

do keep in mind.. some of the spaces.. may have been left empty .. for snow removal.. like around the mail box ...

as a young gardener.. and new to this garden ... frankly.. you need to do what you are doing.. AND RELAX ... just sit in a chair.. and study your space.. there in really no static instant gratification.. in the EVOLUTION of a garden ... and i read a bit of that.. between your lines ...

ken

Thanks Christin, I thought it might look nice there too, my want list and must have list seem to be growing by leaps and bounds :).

Annette

I did try that A. splendens but it promptly died out for me

UPDATE:

It just came to me today, all of a sudden, that the two Assarum Splendens I planted last year never came up this spring...not a trace.

Yes, it's milkweed with orange flowers, just like that one in the picture. I didn't think it would get that big in just one year! I'm looking forward to it!

I did the same thing as southergardening24. Mine bloomed the first year but were very floppy with lots of aphids. This year they are looking great and much bigger, so far no aphids. They still have a fair amount of lean to them, either due to rich soil or the wet spring we've had, but at least this year they're not laying on the ground getting muddy.

I put mine into a border with various prairie grasses, mostly prairie dropseed but also sideoats grama. I planted them in groups of three or so, spaced about 1-1.5 feet apart within each group. They have filled in and I am glad I did not space them any closer.

Thank you so much! I edited my zone so everyone can see it now. Looking at other pictures, I do think you are right about the phlox. Other other two, I may just have to wait to see what blooms.

If you post photos when they bloom, I am sure someone will recognize them.

Again, thanks to all and still waiting anxiously for my flowers...Planted quite afew perrenials, so I am anxious...

Hello All and thanks for all the help...couldn't wait till I got flowers...they are oenothera, or Sundrops! Thanks AGAIN!

Thank you! I keep meaning to figure this one out. It grows in part shade at my parents and gets absolutely no care. I am not find of it, but I admire its toughness.

They are pretty common at places like Home Depot etc around here, usually there's a row of gallon sized plants for sale and I seem them commonly in gardens. Years ago I had some and found them to be low maintenance plants you can pretty much ignore. They will tolerate a lot of shade in my zone.

What a lovely view, if I was walking by I would be standing there taking it all in for more than a few minutes and if you were standing out there brazen hussy as I am I would be begging a tour of the rest of your garden.
I don't do much out the front of our house any more, again someone has come and dug up a plant. We went out for dinner last night, when I jumped out of the truck I wandered over to see if a the newly planted piece of "Cobham Gold" a leucanthemum needed a drink, all I found was a hole where it had been planted, probably taken during the night.
I've had a nice clump there for several years but the early freeze the beginning of November and the rest of the mild but very wet winter almost did it in. I managed to save several bits and grew them on in pots planting one back out last month, well it ain't there no more. This shasta daisy I've been told is on the red list so I would have hated losing it, I have 3 little pieces left, 2 will be planted in the back garden behind our 6 foot fence but I'll sacrifice another piece out front. Not that the six foot fence is a sure thing, I've had plants stolen from there too. What's this world coming to :(.

Annette

Annette - if you were walking by and asked to see the rest of the garden, we'd certainly invite you in for a tour :-) Bummer re the theft of your plant! Generally, this is a very nice neighbourhood with no problems - but back in 2006 the top of the concrete bench in the front garden was lifted off and dropped and broken at the roadside. We reported it to the police just so they'd be aware of it in case there were other incidents - it turned out that there were a number of small vandalisms that had happened during the previous night - there's a high school up the street and a couple of rowdy, drunken teens went on a spree... We replaced the bench top and cemented it to the base so it's much harder to lift it now. We worried at first about the bronze sundial - especially when it was still shiny! That one we cemented to a large, flat stone, covered the stone with soil, and planted creeping thyme (which has since died out....) Anybody that tried to lift the sundial out of place would not likely be aware that they were standing on the base! The iron arbour and iron tuteur are very heavy and are set in cement footings so would be very difficult to move! i have some suspicion that a Midnight Rose heuchera may have 'walked' out of the garden last fall - it went missing and there was a round hole where it was. But it had only been planted a few weeks before so would have been easy to remove - at the rate the local squirrel population moves things around, it's entirely possible that a squirrel could have removed it while searching for bulbs that were dormant in the same area! So I haven't yet had any incidents that would seriously discourage me from gardening in the front.

Gardengal...drove an hour west to Ixonia, Wisconsin to buy Belgian mums from a greenhouse. They haven't started them yet (not sure what that means) and they won't be available for another 2-3 weeks. The nursery guy I talked to says they are not hardy in WI Zone 5. Could this be because they wait too late to sell them and the plant does not have enough time to get established?

I am interested in them because they require no pinching, grow quite large and my mom is from Belgium (silly I know).

This is the only garden center in WI close to me that sells them (that I could find). Are they worth pursuing?

"The nursery guy I talked to says they are not hardy in WI Zone 5. Could this be because they wait too late to sell them and the plant does not have enough time to get established?"

Most likely but I wouldn't take that as gospel :-) Planting any time in June should give the plants plenty of time to establish before cold weather sets in. Certainly much better than planting in late August or September, when mums typically appear on nursery tables. Plant in well drained soil, mulch for the winter and hope for the best.

Well, Dave, your New Zealand delphs are so beautiful. TALL! When you say

“sturdy stems,” does that mean you don’t need to stake them?

Last August I stumbled upon a few perennials at a Sale table so for $1 each I picked up 4 post bloom delphiniums (‘Guinevere’ and two white ones), rose colored penstemon, flowering fuzzy thyme, some carnations (they don’t fair well here, for some reason, and something else.

The delphinium made it through the winter as did the penstemon and one of the carnations (barely a few leaves on it).

I keep meaning to winter sow some or at least somehow put purchased seed in the ground. I hope to do that today or tomorrow. The seed is last year’s packages. Can I just plant on the surface and put a dusting of soil over them, or do I need to refrigerate first in pots of starting mix? I’ve read confusing instructions.

Phoso (pic)

of one called 'Guinevere' (my keyboard is mis-mapping again).

very nice guinevere.

there are differences of opinion about seed freshness. i always use the freshest i can get.

my delphiniums self seed but i always start new ones in pots because the seedlings are so fragile it's easy for them to get lost.

something sometimes quick you might try, is putting the seeds in a damp paper towel in a plastic bag in the refrig. for a few weeks.

i don't stake any of my delphs but the stems on the nz are particularly sturdy.

You did not cut the dead branches back? Mine dies back to the ground every year and is only about 6" tall right now.

I lost a couple last year and thought I did again this year but mine have sprung back. Both years it got down to -3 so that seems to be near the breaking point for me. Other years they've started leafing out from actual branches, not the roots!

Wow kirstin! Your garden is popping! My Peonies are still in tight bud. Very pretty!

Nice photos! Your peonies look particularly great and I love the way the Veronica weaves around the rose.

There are two ways I know of getting your photos right side up in GW. One is to figure out what way you have to position the camera or phone in order that the photo is upright. For instance, with my phone, the button I push to take the photo has to be on the right with the phone held in landscape mode. Mostly though, I just pop photos into image processing software and rotate it and then save it. My image processing software is iPhoto, but I did a search and there are free online programs as well that will do rotation for you.

I'm definitely no expert, but it seems to me it would also be helpful to know what direction the house faces. That can make a big difference since the sun' s intensity varies a lot during the course of the day.

Congratulations on that beautiful curve! I'm envious. Can you tell me how you did it & take some closeup pics so I could learn? Thanks.

Sigh. I must have one. I'm not even going to try to fight this one....

:)

rouge that is really spectacular. I like them in general and grow at least five var., they are such quietly elegant plants but this one takes it to another level.