13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
And another funny thread on Home Disasters:
"with an open crawl space under the porch" . . . I would start by using wire mesh or latticework to cover this to keep critters out. Around here, it's common for skunks to want to move into dark areas like this, and I can't imagine that you'd like them as close neighbors.
You might want to do two or three photos of your home from across the road. Take one that looks at the whole front yard straight on, and one standing in the same place but rotated to the left of center a third from the same spot, but rotated right of center. That way anyone giving you advice has a feel for the entire yard you want to landscape.
Each situation is different and where I live it is very different than the two posters above. Here I grow xeric plants because I got tired of wasting water, besides its getting to the point that supplemental watering is not an option if a person has a conscience at all down here in the hotter and dryer Midwest and SW. Many xeric plants do not benefit from the addition of compost, it makes the soil too rich -- so what to do? It is advised to add Soil Mender (trademark) Expanded Shale, very coarse sand or chicken gravel. What I was after was raised beds with lean soil that drains fast. Thats what I got.
I brought in drainage material by the truckloads. Amount matters and people who have done this successfully will agree with that. Those who merely theorize, I don't listen to (obviously) especially if they live in a place so entirely different than mine.
I second Ken's statement in the original post ANYTHING BUT CLAY. Roots cannot breathe in it, its a sea of sticky mud after rain, it dries hard as a rock & forms large cracks in summer which harms foundations, its hard to water once it dries out which happens quickly here and it is unpleasant in every imaginable way.
Personally I hate gardening in clay, I refuse to garden in clay and I have definitely fixed that by getting drastic and not letting tales of doom influence me. My soil is now sandy. Most plants that are appealing to me require excellent drainage and are not conventional bedding plants & they do quite well in it and have for several years now but I also found the more conventional plants do very well too. I've read all the comments against doing this and how it makes concrete (false) but my experience in my particular case in this particular part of the country for my purposes has proved it to be very successful. I always wonder if all those people saying to never add sand have ever actually done it or are they all just quoting from the same source? I don't know but I do wonder.
"I second Ken's statement in the original post ANYTHING BUT CLAY. Roots
cannot breathe in it, its a sea of sticky mud after rain, it dries hard
as a rock & forms large cracks in summer which harms foundations,
its hard to water once it dries out which happens quickly here and it is
unpleasant in every imaginable way."
This is true of the "bad clays". There are better soils classified by USGS as "loamy clays" that are some cases considered excellent agricultural and agronomic assets.
"I always wonder if all those people saying to never add sand have ever actually done it"
Yes I've been gardening since I was a child and at some point in my teen years naively added a bag of play sand to an 5'X5' area because I'd read somewhere it would help me grow dwarf conifers. In fact it, yes, formed something that became, in places, even hardier than the native red clay of Virginia. There IS a way to do it: if it worked well for you, you found that way. But it's not always the best solution...just as adding organics is not always the best solution, either! I think we are all more or less agreeing there is not always a one-size-fits-all fix.
cf: http://puyallup.wsu.edu/~linda%20chalker-scott/horticultural%20myths_files/Myths/Amendments%202.pdf
thank you, thank you. i hope your spring will come with a rush. after months of unseasonable weather, 2 nights ago the tops of all the hosta pips and the aruncus froze at 28 degrees. one of the good points about having so many things is that there's always something to take our minds off little things like that.
Hi everyone! I am so grateful to all of you for your helpful comments. I will definitely go with S. Caradonna! You are all so responsive and generous with your knowledge. What a great group of 'gardeners' we have on this forum! Thank you all very much!
I love my salvia nemorosa Caradonna. This year I'm trying I'm trying S. nemorosa New Dimension Blue. It really looks nice. The nemorosas are one of the few that seem to be able to handle winter wet.
I also have incredible luck with veronica spicata varieties all except Border Blue. If dead headed they bloom all year. I mostly have the dark purple and blue varieties.
"When I grew all of these (serious hardy euphorbia obsession!) in my old
garden, they crossed readily with my big wulfenii and the seedlings had a
lot of red coloring as well as being much more long lived."
Yeah, interesting you saw the same thing I did. My purple surviving one is obviously a hybrid with the nearby E. wulfenii/characias from Joy Creek. You wonder if those various commercial E. X martinii were tested at all for longevity. Maybe they were...with the goal being the opposite of longevity! I wonder the same thing about Digiplexus 'Illumination Flame', which died even in my sunny garage where various other fussy, tender rarities were perfectly happy, like Correa, Agapetes and Lapageria.
Yeah, my Digiplexis didn't make it either. And we had an exceedingly mild winter with temps well above normal. Although supposedly rated to z8, I think that one takes more of its hardiness (or lack thereof) from its Canary Island contributor, Isospslexis canariensis, which is only hardy to around 32F. Was hoping that hardiness rating was true but obviously not, as I had a Z9 winter for sure.
I bought a replacement, tho. I loved the color and hummers loved the flowers.
Dbarron, I now see Edelweiss has the one I ordered a few years ago, it was definitely 'Red Sensation': Plant Group
I can't be certain but I wonder if the reason it grows well for me is it has some Alstroemeria psittacina genes in it. Which is one of the species known to tolerate southern heat & humidity. I tried A. psittacina many many years ago but it wasn't very vigorous for me. Broadly speaking, I find that hybrids of heat tolerant species sometimes are even better garden plants than the species themselves.
In any case after all but having given up on Alstroemerias, 'Red Sensation' has been a huge success, blooming on and off all summer. And surviving the past two winters, with snow cover though. (natural the first winter, Kubota front-end-loaded the second!)
Excellent CMK!
(I have ordered very little. This past weekend I bought on-line 3 "Minnie Pearl" phlox paniculata and 1 Uvularia grandiflora).
(It is because of the far reaching influence ie enabling of GW that I have many epimediums and Helleborus).
LOL, don't get me started on Hellebores they can be down right addictive. I don't have many named varieties other than 'Onyx Odyssey', 'Ashwood Double White', 'Ashwood Double Pink' and H. foetidus 'Wester Flisk'. A few years back I grew seed from Ashwood in the U.K. and got a nice mix of colors....
Nothing spectacular but one from the 'Royal Heritage' strain, flower left bottom corner is from a flopped over H. argutifolius.
'Wester Flisk' in bloom
DS2 was up from Victoria the other day, showed me some pictures of the double Hellebore they grew, almost had me drooling :). The seed again from Ashwood in the U.K. needless to say mom sent him home with baggies with instructions to bag some of those flowers as soon as he stepped out of his truck. Yep they are addicting.
Annette
Oh, p.s. Does Blanket Flower from a nursery bloom the first year? This is very important as the C. Baby Sun didn't bloom in its first year last year and I have many eyes upon me as I try to establish this perennial flower bed for our condominium. (what was I thinking? lol)
dinah C. 'Baby Sun' should have bloomed first year so hopefully this year it will perform beautifully. They usually bloom first year from seed.
Gaillardia (Blanket Flower) should also. 'Goblin' is one I have grown for many years and it is a prolific bloomer. It is very compact, under 12". There is 'Golden Goblin' but I have not grown it. So many new intros have come onto the market and time will tell if they perform as well.
There is a miniature Daylily that I would recommend. 'Penny's Worth' blooms all summer long. It will take a break for a few days here and there but it continues to bloom even after snow has fallen. It is also under 12".
I think you should give your Coreopsis a chance to prove itself but it is nice to have alternatives.
Daylily 'Penny's Worth' is in the centre of the pic.
Where are you? (you can add that under your profile under About Me.) I think how long-lived they are depends on the both the plant and the growing conditions. For me, Agastache rupestris is short-lived because years when we have either really cold temperatures without snow-cover or really cold wet springs, I lose mine. Mine are happy enough to reseed a few plants some years and they typically will return for 3-5 years before adverse conditions require replacement.
Many of the western Agastaches that I have tried are annuals in my garden, and I will have to look into some of the hardier blue Agastaches to find one or more that are both happy in my wet early spring and don't reseed too much. Anyone in colder zones have suggestions?
I for one think everyone has had a great comment here, and I would combine the answers into one plan!
If this were my yard, I would enlarge that paved area by about three times - at least out to the ac unit and out to the line of the downspout. I think having that paved area (whether it's concrete, stones, pavers, whatever) would just help define the area, and as it stands now that walkway is too tiny and utilitarian. A bigger area will give some definition to the area as an entryway, a sitting area, etc, and look better in scale to the house. Might even be nice to have a pathway connect from that to whatever other path/walkway you have in the yard. I can't tell from the photo if there is already one there or that is just dirt.
I have three rain barrels, and love them. I should note that not a one is connected to a downspout, as DH won't hear of cutting into the downspouts, so I can only dream of the abundance of water I'd have if I did! However, even without that, mine do fill up slowly but nicely, and I do use them with watering cans, either dipped in, or under the spigot, as my barrels are on cinderblocks to give just enough height to get a watering can under. These rain barrels help me cut down on my well use, and IMO are a great idea in general in terms of water conservation.
I'm not quite sure WHERE you want to put a garden - along the wall where the ac unit is? To the left of the photo where that bag is? Extending it out from the bag to cover that green area? Is that where the moss is? IMO, you can have a garden almost anywhere, if you have the right plant for the spot. I've put in a bog-type garden in an area where it floods every spring, and which sometimes has standing water well into August. Again, it's the matter of the right plant. Determine just how wet this area is, and do your homework researching plants that like that moisture level and the sun levels you have. Amending the soil helps, but do it as nature would - don't try to change the soil there, but enhance it. It will take some trial and error but I'm sure it can be done. There are many plants you can use.
As for moss, I too don't understand why some people dislike it so much. I had a friend who I used to help in her garden, and we live in a very wooded area. She had a quite damp yard, and lots of shade and trees, and along the edge of the lawn she had these wide swaths of moss - a good 10 to 15 feet deep from edge of lawn to woods. She tried for years to get rid of it and get grass to grow. I always told her it looked wonderful, it was soft, green, and from a distance who could tell? She was constantly worried about the resale value of not having a lawn (and it's going on a least 25 years that she's been in the house and worrying about this!). The one downfall to moss, IMO, is that it does rake up very easily when you are raking up leaves, so that is a pain. But other than that, if its green and nothing else will grow there (in terms of lawn, not garden), then that is the plant to have there! I don't know. I guess I'm just a big believer in working with nature and not against her.
Good luck and keep us posted on your evolving garden!
Dee
Dee -
For putting in a new garden, I was thinking where the bag is out to where moss is. I already have garden going where the AC unit is -some ferns, Japanese forest grass and astilbes. Right around the down spout in front of the shed there are a lot of weeds/moss and grass does not do well there anyways. I have not thought about expanding the pathway. It is really tiny and narrow right now. I do have a patio to the right of below picture that has seating area, etc.
I marked my picture on what I was thinking of converting to a garden bed. This might need to happen over two years, so I will do the left half this year and right half next year. I am 100% up for planting what works there! If moss, I want to encourage moss, but there are lots of weeds there too. Maybe I will try some large flagstones/splash block/rain barrel to see how that changes the area and next year I can decide next steps.
I have always thought cardinalis preferred wet soil mine plenty wet but sunny dont do well is it just to hot near greenville nc
Lobelia cardinalis grows on banks and sandbars of rivers here. It certainly prefers wet. And yes, you should have an evergreen basal rosette all winter..and growth from that should be initiating upward now.