13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
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.
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!
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 think it's lovely, whether it was planted purposefully or not. I'd leave it and see how it looks through the season. If it gets weedy looking, then pull it. I'm trying to leave anything to grow that provides blooms, pollen and nectar for our suffering insect pollinators. If we don't reverse the dramatic loss of bees and other pollinators, we may not have much food left on our tables soon.
Martha
It's nearly one year later and I just found this thread. This Veronica 'Tidal Pool' looks exactly like Veronica Whitleyi, which I have been growing for several years, but for which I can find no documentation online. Perhaps it has been re-named. I bought it as a plant from a mail order company, maybe Dominion Seed House, and it stays quite small for a couple of years and then it takes off. It winds it way around things, is evergreen, and the flowers are true blue. It forms a nice mat in my rock garden. Forget about it, and will perfom just fine. This is not a very good pic. - early in the season. It will bloom all summer.
perhaps the jury is still out another year later on this plant. Mine has not done well, nor has it ever bloomed. It has become smaller and I do believe will give up the ghost entirely, probably this summer. I am VERY disappointed. Don't know if I shall bother buying again next year....
We had record breaking rains this year. Much of Texas and Oklahoma had flooding, but we simply had constant rain. I do not use chemicals, and did not expect powdery mildew on my phlox plants. Actually it is only on one.
What do you do manually to prevent powdery mildew or other funguses? fungi?
For roses I throw away those that get much powdery mildew, but do you mean that you remove the leaves or cut them back?
I will cut back the ones with powdery mildew, but am going to return to the nursery and try to interrogate them more on the care of the phlox plants that they sell. I need to learn.
Sammy
Re manual treatment:
Add organic matter yearly, observe and water (as needed) and don't use problem plants (viz. need continuously healthy plants that can fight off diseases). Stake to separate as needed. Keep an eye on the plants as the garden grows (includes gets taller). Thin out, as required. Deadhead. Cut back promptly after flowering. Get the sun to the soil surface in fall (and to the spring perennials: no mulch present). Clear the whole surface of any plant debris before the ground freezes.
Works for us in our relatively small sunny northern garden which contains very large numbers of perennials, including lots and lots of garden phlox.
Gee, I thought the wind was blowing over my phlox plants. We have all kinds of animals since a creek runs through the back of our yard. Recently we have had more squirrels than rabbits, but that could change. We have always had large hawks, too. When our puppies were young, we would never let them into our fenced in yard until we thought they were big enough to handle them selves with a hawk. We have golden retrievers. My neighbor saw a hawk grab a rabbit once.
Sammy
In my experience, definitely "yes".
Have grown over a dozen different Veronica spicata, V. longifolia and hybrid cultivars; most recently Veronica 'Purpleicious' paired with Stachys monieri 'Hummelo. In the latter case, the Veronica's has now petered away (lasted three or four years); the Stachys still looks very healthy
The Chicago Botanic Garden study cites "wet soil conditions in winter was a fairly significant problem for the speedwell trials".
On the other hand, the study also includes a Veronicastrum (Culver's root) part. Love Culver's root which does very well in our own and other gardens around here and is very long-lived. The study cites well-drained soils for Culver's root not mentioning winter.
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.