13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
Teakettle, Sorry for the delay in responding to your question. I was away for a few days.
Anyway, here's the picture again with the ID's below.
The tall yellow flower is Ligularia przewalskii. To the right is an astilbe, with Regal Splendor hosta in front along with Lady's Mantle and a new brunnera. Yes the fern is the common ostrich fern. I give lots of it away every year.
Unless you consider them very unsightly right now, there's no reason not to let them stay green as long as possible. You can cut them back after they have frozen and died, or even cut them back in spring.
They will naturally die down all the way to the ground when they do go dormant. The stems should basically fall out on their own or you can cut them down to 1-2 inches.
They may be established well enough survive winter whether you cut them or not, but you'll certainly improve your chances even more if you leave them green as long as possible. September-planted mums sometimes make it and sometimes they don't. But the green leaves will allow the roots to continue getting deeper.
I tend to cut them both down, the asters because they tend to get mildew and I want to reduce the amount of disease that winters over. My particular mums, which are a totally winter hardy, late-blooming variety, have pretty tough stems, so if they stop blooming before the snow buries them I cut them back to remove the dead stick look. Most often, however, they disappear beneath the snow before they stop blooming and they get trimmed back when they emerge in the spring.
I couldn't finish looking at all the photos. So rich. Got garden envy and indigestion at the same time. Not to mention frustration I've never seen 3/4 for sale at any garden center and I'll have to search on line when it is not the end of the work week and late at night as well.
Marie
Thanks all for lovely comments.
Hostaholic, thanks for the info. Recently I have been studing the issue of allelopathic properties of some Centaureas. According to some experiments, it was not decided with certainty whether other plants misthrived because of the chemicals or just because of 'starvation' caused by the plants in question. Up to now I have observed that an aconitum growing very close to Helianthus Triumph de Gand was in bad condition. But it could also be ascribed to winter damage. But I also know another thing. I have a bird feeder with sunflower seeds. There is no grass under the feeder.
Does anybody know anything about Sanguisorba canadensis as a garden plant???
^The pieces I am plucking out of the crown are not completely stem or root but I think they are functioning much more like roots. They are full of the gooey latex sap that comes from roots, which I think contains a lot of stored energy, and clearly the tissue is still fully alive though the plant is completely dormant.
I think it is basically a root cutting and has had a very high success rate when it is put in a cool/cold spot. A few that I thought had died... recently produced leaves, to my surprise. And many of the true root cuttings I made by digging very low down on the plant have not produced any leaves at all! Those all failed, but the cuttings containing parts of the dormant crown of the plant survived.
I love interesting pottery. Don't love storing it for winter, but really enjoy the pieces scattered on my patios. Not a big of fan of ceramic glazed, I enjoy more of a "natural" look, although I do have one big honkin' bright blue ceramic pot next to my front door in which I plant hot pink geraniums every season - can't miss that combo from the street :0) .
I have a few cement statuary pieces scattered about the beds, too - not a lot, and the pieces are on the smaller side, just accent pieces here and there.
The only thing plastic is good for as far as I'm concerned is lining pots - I have a very strong dislike of any visible plastic in the garden.
No pics right now - I'm at work, won't upload from here.
Everything is so lush and green, so well cared for. I like all the grass paths, and how you have different garden areas.
Is that one small white tree a dappled willow?
Landscape looks similar to our area. Can you change your profile to include the state where you live so we can have a better idea where to place you?
I'm 5'1" and around 118 lbs. I managed to dig out 2 well established yuccas myself, but I have to admit we have sandy soil. I made sure to get all the root system. That was quite a few years ago and it hasn't grown back. Now if I can manage to dig out that gigantic sylphium out back.....OMG.
Well, yesterday I took a pruning shear, a good flat bladed spade, and a rake and managed to thin them down to about two plants. I'm sure there's still roots left for some of them, but if we keep up every spring with hacking out any new growth, I think it might be controllable, as long as we stay vigilant.
There had two be a dozen dead plants buried under the live ones. I think within a two foot area there were a dozen or so live plants. Yikes. And those roots are something else. I weigh 280 pounds and was jumping full force on the shovel trying to break through to sever a young yucca off the mother plant. I practically bounced off.
And my mom actually came out, looked at the thinned out plants, and wondered if she had someplace she could plant them. My incredulous "Do you have someplace else you want them to grow out of control??" did make her change her mind on that, thankfully.
People are so ignorant. Just ignore them. One of our regionally famous landscape/gardening centers is owned by a man and host of a news segment on gardening in Cleveland! Petitti's Gardening Center has a segment all summer long on Fox 8 Cleveland News and the host is AJ Petitti and most definitely a man :)
Oh, you're all just a bunch of horto-sexuals!
Purple, I would have had to beat you off my husband with a shovel earlier this year when he (also a professional horticulturist) brought home a big flat of bright purple Angelonia.
Back in my university days (Va. Tech), the hort. department was mostly male. That included the greenhouse production courses and the floriculture classes, too. I've never in my whole life considered the love of and care of flowering plants a feminine (only) art.