13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
Today I was looking around the Home Depot Garden Center, and there it was! My second pic is a Podocarpus. It was small, in a one gallon container, but the tag says it gets very tall! The first pic I have to believe is a Boxwood. I have ruled out the Firefly and the Barberry because the branches are way different. I don't think it is an Oleander either, because all Oleander around here are burned from the past two winters. I have two in my yard & I think they are both gonners! No leaves on them, the branches are soft, and when cutting them back, there is no green...
$3 isn't so bad, in my opinion. Especially for Klehm's. Their plants are huge!
I've noticed some sellers on ebay will ship unlimited numbers of plants for $7.99 (or similar). More and more I'm checking ebay before I buy from an online nursery site. Usually I end up going with the nursery, but I've found some great deals on great plants and trees on ebay.
I dont know if this is helpful or not....if its applicable to this situation....but whenever i order online, i alway google "company name discount coupon code"or "free shipping coupon code". Several sites will come up. Check out the first 3 to 5 links. I'd say 20 to 30% of the time i find codes for 5 to 20% off or a free S&H code. Not always, but it never hurts to try ;-)
Marie, if you want to change the name displayed you can do that in a few clicks.
Go to
1) "Your Houzz" in the upper right corner of your screen
2) On the next page "edit your profile" in the upper right
3a) under "Profile Information" and "First name (publicly displayed)" put in whatever you want to show when you post and while you are there you can add your zone under "About me". Mine (which they filled in after I emailed them about the lack of zone information) reads: "My zone is: z4b-5a NH".
Elsewhere one of the Houzz staff wrote that the zone will appear when you post in the GW section of the forums, but not if you post on Houzz. Since I never go to the Houzz part of the site, I haven't tested that out.
I particularly welcome early bulbs in areas that melt sooner, both the early shoots and the blooms. I have an uninsulated foundation on part of the house, and along the sunny parts of the uninsulated foundation I can see sprouts of reticulated iris and foliage of Colchicum, both of which seem quite frost-proof since it hasn't cleared 25 degrees for several days and is still getting into single digits many nights, not our usual for late March (or even late February.)
Colchicum put out spring foliage, but bloom in early autumn.
Most of the garden is still under at least a foot of snow. I do know that the shrubs under the dump line of the eaves will need to pruned to ground level, but that was planned for and the spireas and Annabelle hydrangeas are fine with severe pruning. I am not sure what the arborvitaes in the large shrub bed will look like, and elsewhere there are a few deciduous azaleas that look somewhat flattened. Our first snow of the year was heavy and wet which then turned to ice, so most things have been entombed since late November even though I did my best to clear off the worst of the snow before it froze on.
I hope that PM2's 'SKy Pencil' and Marie's Japanese Maple recover from this winter!
Finally a border without snow in it and surprise, surprise, daffodil foliage just coming up in spots!
Barb, is that a current photo of Colchicum? It's really up high already.
Marie, glad you are keeping your Maple, I hope that goes well.
Wow, what a lot of clean up to do out there. Boxwoods look horrible. I am going to have to cut them back drastically. Oh well, they'll be small for awhile, but they grow fast and won't need much pruning for a couple of years, if I have to cut them back that far. I'll be surprised if I find one that doesn't need a severe cut back. I can't see them all yet. My two in the front are extremely slow growing, so I hope I don't have to do much pruning on those.
Vegetable beds still frozen.
Marie, and Barb, the Sky Pencil won't be straight as a stick for sure. It looks like they'll have a little curve in them, but that's okay. The potted Sky Pencils I saw at Stonegate had the same kind of shape. They were mature and had a sort of tear drop shape. As long as they remain vertical, so far, I'm okay with them. And they still have some snow at the base, so they may straighten up a little more when all the snow is gone. The dump line of our garage roof, is over the Sky Pencils, that was the problem.
Barb, I gave up on trying to keep the snow off anything. The snow was too deep to get to anything in the back and all the shoveling around the front just piled it all up on everything.
We had to have roofers on the roof this winter and they trampled a Hydrangea in the front, I'll have to cut that one back severely too, but at least it blooms on new wood. I used to have an Annabelle there but I changed it to Madame Emille Mouillere. I see I had Deutzia and Syringa pallibin that is crushed along the back dump line. Not surprised. The couple of Arborvitaes we have look okay.
I had assumed the Delft Blue came from your garden....? I didn't do anything special to it when planting (my usual procedure is to dig a not-too-big hole, loosen up the roots if the plant looks pot-bound, plunk the plant in the hole, put the excavated soil back around it and firm it up....!) I planted the penstemon where it gets decent sun and on the front half of the main front bed where it is on a slight slope. So it made it through the winter on its own! The sedum you gave me, on the other hand, appears to have vanished (or else I forgot where I put it!)
I'm still wondering about the color on the Delft Blue - it sure doesn't match the images for that variety. Does anyone else on here grow that one? If so, what does yours look like? Whatever this one is is very pretty. I like it better than your Red Riding Hood :-) so thank you for this one!
Floral, if I remember correctly the ones I had did, not one for the show bench with it's split caylxs but still a very pretty cottage flower.
Thanks Patty, only trouble is this darn border thing, so plants are out, seeds are OK :)
Annette
I have it but I bought it as a plant. I've done a quick Google and I don't see any sources for seed over here either. I'm wondering if it would come true even if it did set seed? My plants have not produced any seeds that I've noticed but then the dying flowers are a mess. They tend to get sodden rather than dry so I often dead head them. The plants are easy to obtain and cheap here. It's a pity you can't find them. The smell is lovely.
California is the land of micro climates. When living in Watsonville with the marine weather influence it grew like a weed. Although we had lots of foggy summers it thrived in what little heat we had. Here in Calistoga away from the marine influence, we get just enough frost to keep us from growing it. I will bet that in Atherton with the right exposure it will grow fine. Al
FWIW there's a hardier hybrid in Europe called B. X spectroglabra that is probably fully hardy in reasonably sunny, warm parts of zn 9* but it's unclear whether it has ever been imported into the US or recreated here. These are the ones seen around the Italian Lakes region and in gardens along the Atlantic coast of France. (I already spend too much time trying to find the whereabouts of rare plants that could possibly grow for me, and shouldn't stuff my brain cells with information on ones that one that couldn't...but oh well...it is what it is)
* - I think it they could cover shop windows in London, they'd already be doing so
Thanks NHBabs! I am just wondering in your case if it could be a PH issue as well as the wet. My soil is slightly acidic which is fine but I see many references that they prefer an alkaline soil. In spring mine look like the pic you showed here.
I totally agree kfless and floral I have never seen a Lavender that blue!
Years ago I planted seedlings of a hybrid form of Lythrum salicaria in the garden. They self-seeded very scantily. Unfortunately the Japanese beetles loved them. There may be a remaining solitary plant remaining in an out-of-the way spot.
Liatris is often mentioned as a good substitute for Lythrum, but it really can't match its ornamental performance in my opinion. Long-flowering Salvia hybrids are a better bet.
"Self-seeded very scantily" that's precisely what I've seen, Rusty.
I wonder whether supposedly infertile garden purple loosetrife cultivars need to be within pollinator range of free-seeding wild plants to occasionally lose their self-incompatibility.
I haven't planted any purple loosestrife for years. However, it always annoys me when people imply that there are equally attractive garden substitutes here for horticultural purple loosestrife. I agree with you, for instance, about Liatris.
At the same time, Liatris is a great garden perennial. I've used a lot of 'Kobold', which I find a particularly attractive Liatris cultivar. I also do agree that one may well get more and longer (with dead-heading) colour from a number of long-lived perennial Salvia cultivars (species or hybrids).
Most photo software programs have tagging functions. I have tags set up for all the key areas of the garden (e.g. front bed, driveway border, south alley, north alley, backyard). It just takes a second to tag each photo when I download them. At the beginning of each year I create a new set of the same tags with the current year added. Then I can do a fast search by tag, or use the somewhat slower calendar search that uses the date that is automatically applied by the camera. The calendar search doesn't sort by garden area, so it's definitely useful to use tags in addition to give you more search options.
My garden resolution this year is to spend more time enjoying what I've got, rather than constantly looking for how to cram in more. I started back at a full time job for the first time in 9 years, and I want to make sure I am getting quality time in my garden, since it will be limited!!