It's December - let's celebrate our gardens

Willowwind, that's a lovely combination. Is the blue Larkspur?

Gorgeous!

I do know these...a ballerina rose with Ville de Lyon clematis growing through. One of my favorite combinations.

Willow

That is very very pretty.

Thanks. It's amazing sometimes what happens without fully planning it Sometimes I get things put together nicely on purpose, but as often as not they just kind of evolve on their own.

Stormy, I love your spring bulbs. Do you lift them after blooming or just plant around them? I'd love to have mine that thick, but then I end up digging into them when I'm trying to put in other things, especially in the fall. Guess I need to draw maps.

Willow

Willow, I leave them in the ground. My beds are full of bulb markers. I could never lift them There are many thousands of bulbs here.

Well they're certainly beautiful. I'm hoping to start getting mine marked next spring as they come up. You must really look forward to spring with such a show in store!
Oh, and yes that is blue larkspur with the lilies...it's so pretty with so many things, but I have to watch that it doesn't seed where the animals might graze as it is poisonous.
Willow

Thank you, Willow. This year I added, just in "shoes and socks" type of bulbs over 2000 tiny blue underplantings of muscari, squill and chionodoxa. I also added another 2000 or so larger bulbs of all types.

Stormy! Thats a beautiful Butterfly Bench in your May picture.
Polly! A word of encouragment from me here. I was dubious about poppy success until it worked for me this year.
Just a note of early spring weeding tasks.The germinated poppies have bluegreen deep cut leaves, and dont Preen before or after you sow the seeds like I did. I took out a bunch of Black poppy seeds last fall.

Willow

Love the larkspur with the lilies. I was thinking the blue larkspur would be great with my Elodie lily pictured here.

Mary - I like your butterfly bench too. I am already looking forward to pictures next year with the underplantings of muscari, squill and chionodoxa. That will be beautiful!

Carolyn

I love all those spring bulbs.The squills just run wild.
I planted Anemone Blandas with tulips.Saw it in J.Sheepers catalogue.

The lilies and larkspur are delightful companions - wonderful photo! Love the clematis and the Ballerina rose as well.

stormy - we can all look forward to your spring show. It should be wonderful.

Thanks, everyone. The bench is actually a hummingbird, but everybody thinks it's a butterfly. I chose the hummingbird, not only because of love for that creature, but all of the butterfly benches that I looked at were more narrow and shallow. I wanted a bench where 2 could sit comfortably. I love to sit there in the spring and enjoy the bulb show.

GE, I've decided that I'm not going to put down an antigerminator until July. I figure that will give all scattered seeds and reseeders a chance to start. This will take a lot of courage on my part as I still get a lot of weeds even with using stuff like Preen. Maybe when my beds fill in a little more, it won't be so bad. Because of the voles, I have to keep the mulching pretty light.

Willow, are your Larkspur a perennial variety?

Stormy! good luck it will be a beautiful serene spot.I can hear Orioles in the dappled shade.

Willow! Yes what variety larkspur is that.
I have ordered dark blue from Fragrentpaths.I read larkspur isnt a perennial but reseeds and gives the illusion of comming up in the same place year after year.
I also have a variety on my saved cart at Bluestone.

This variety of Larkspur looked interesting to me. I put in 3 of these this summer. http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/199485/

I also added some of this annual form, although the nursery was selling it as a perennial. We'll see if it comes back. I liked it's short size.

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/155296/

I have this one on order from Bluestone
Delph,grandiflorum Blue Butterfly

Carolyn, That Elodie Lily is very pretty. Is that an Asiatic? Is it more pink or peach?

2000 of those little mixed blue bulbs didn't even put a dent in underplanting all of the tulips and daffs. But it will put spots of color through out the beds. I will have to keep adding more each year.

SallyG gave me the idea of planting 1 or 2 Muscari in with every tulip or daff planting to be able to use the reemerged fall foliage as a marker for the other bulbs. I plan on planting muscari in the spring too, so I can cover a lot of the bulbs that have lost their markers.

Ge, The anemones are very nice too. I had some come up for the first time this past spring. I'm waiting to see how they look this spring before adding more. I was able to buy white ones individually, but the other colors all came in mixes. Mixes don't appeal to me, but I tried a few.

That tulip bed is 150 x 30'. It takes a lot of bulbs to fill it. This year I added bulbs on the outside of the tree line and mixed in a lot of red & white striped tulips through out the bed and added more daffs to prolong their season.

Ge, That's a pretty one. How tall does it get?

Lovely pictures All. Such pretty sweeps of color. I love these gold Lycoris. and unfortunately so do the Lubber grasshoppers

the bluestone one is only 14 inches.I dont think I will get it.
The Anemone blandas spread. Check this spring to see if your patch has enlarged .

This is one thing I am happy winter is chasing away....the Eastern Lubber

ghaaaak

These critters eat bulbs...amaryllis, lycoris, lily, crinum, glads...lost all my muscari to them...and they get big...used to be afraid of them, but anger took care of that....grin. Keep my pruners in my pocket any time I am outside....dead and I don't have to touch them....grin

ge and Stormy, I believe that larkspur was just from a generic mixed larkspur packet I had scattered in one of the wilder corners. I really liked the blue so saved the seed specifically from those and rescattered around the lilies. Usually you still come up with a variety of colors, I guess due to cross pollination, but these seemed to come up pretty true. I have some pink larkspur that have also stayed truer to parent, but I know that doesn't always work. If you want perennial though, I believe there are some of the delphinium that grow more like an annual larkspur in form...maybe Blue Mirror or Blue Butterfly...but will come back like a perennial, and of course have that incredible blue.

Wow Stormy! you've done an awfully lot of bulb planting. Where do you get your bulbs in such quantities? How do you deal with dying foliage when your other plants are coming up? I have so much to learn!

Carolyn, I love your Elodie lily. I've seen it in catalogs and it looks like it really is a pretty one. I think the larkspur would be gorgeous with it.

Does anyone know what this iris might be? I received it from a friend who couldn't remember the name and it's multiplied really well, but I don't know how to address it, other than "Sweetie", when I'm in the garden.

Willow

Absolutely gorgeous beds, Mary! have you considered putting scilla in. Mine spread like crazy, but don't seem hindered at all by the perennials that come up after them. The scilla campanulata Sky Blue is the one I have. Or is that what you ar calling squill? I'm not too familiar with the common names on things. If you don't have Sky Blue, I'd be more than happy to send you down a large clump this spring, with whatever else it is I was going to send you (I have it on my calendar).

Thanks WILLow.
I had Blue Butterfly on order but its 14 inches tall and I wanted something taller.Seeds are comming from Fragrant paths as soon as they get my order.
They are hard to find.The pale blues are in the usual shops ThomMorg,Annies,Burpees.

Did you check Stokes? I'm always forgetting about them, and i love the company.

I'll give a look

I know some of my posts sound really disjointed, but my silly dial-up takes about 20-30 minutes to upload a picture, so from the time I start 'til I get it up I can sound like I've really lost track of what's going on...which I guess I have. Oh well...such is life. At least it's not actually my brain...yet!

Stormy, I've not heard of "shoes and socks" bulbs, what are those. I love the idea of the muscari as bulb markers, that's brilliant. I have thousands of those so it would be quite easy to do. Thanks!

Moonhowl, Gorgeous Lycoris and UGLY bug. Glad he doesn't live here. Bulb eating bugs would just be too much. The voles are bad enough!! Love your defensive technique!

Willow, That Iris is gorgeous and there are several that look like that. I would post it on the Iris forum and ask.

I buy bulbs from lots of different places, but yes, always in large quantities. I shop each variety for price because I find that a supplier who is cheap on one variety is often expensive on another. It's very confusing when they all start coming in, because their "Partners" might come in weeks apart from two different companies. It makes the planting season challenging, but at least they don't have to be watered while waiting!

Polly, Thank you. I added a few hundred Scilla "Spring Beauty" this fall in my beds around the house. I didn't want muscari there, because I find the foliage makes those areas look messy.

Willow, I just let the foliage stay until it dies. I cut all of the spent bloom stalks right away, but tolerate the messy foliage. The Alliums, Iris, Poppy, Hosta and other emerging perennial foliage helps to hide it, but it does take some tolerating. It really is necessary, especially with the tulips to leave it alone, unwrapped to try to assure that they return.

This message was edited Dec 9, 2009 12:27 PM

Polly, Thank you, yes I would love some of your Scilla (Squill). That is so nice of you. It will take a number of years to cover all of this area. That tulip bed is my small one.

Willow, shoes and socks just means planting shorter smaller blooms to grow at the base of the larger plants. With bulbs, generally, you can just add some of the smaller bulbs in the same holes, on top of the other bulbs as they don't need to be planted so deeply.

My friend must have a few million muscari on her property and whenever she brings me a plant from her garden, I usually find 25 or 30 muscari bulbs wrapped up in the roots. I separate them and plant them anywhere I see bulb markers.

Thanks Stormy. I've always left my foliage too, but I don't have anywhere close to the quantity of bulbs you do. They're absolutely beautiful. I'm surprised you don't have accidents due to people taling too good a look. I've never had trouble with bulb munchers, that I know of so I should try more.

Oh moonhowl, that's one ugly hopper. I thought we had every type that could hop, but I've never seen one that big, certainly nothing that eats bulbs. I get frustrated with them eating many of the mid-late summer flowers and foliage, but they don't seem to keep things from coming back. We entertain ourselves on summer evenings by catching them and throwing them to the chickens. He he he!

Polly I ordered a 2010 catalogue from Stokes,they didnt have the larkspur variety I wanted,just lilac and pink.

Thank you, Willow. The rush hour traffic always backs up along there and the commuters often talk to me when I'm working out there. Last year, one of them put some photos that they took in my mail box. I have come home to find a couple of people out there with cameras.

There used to be a bus stop on my corner and the folks waiting for the bus used to give me a daily running commentary on my plantings!! I was beginning to think I was community gardening. LOL

OK, Mary, I have you down for scilla and Aichi, LOL.

I don't know why i always forget about Stokes, Jo Ann. I love the company. They are local. the seeds always have good germination. I need a large amount of forget me not seeds for my creek beds, I'll check them.

Just checked and Stokes doesn' have the forget me nots I want. They are the biennial kind that seed all over the place. Anyone know the variety?

That's funny...but if ever got stuck in rush hour trafic I'd certainly like something beautiful to look at. You've given "the commute home" a personal touch! The only things we get stuck behind out here are slow moving farm equipment and an occasional buggy out around Yoder. I did, one year, find pictures from my place in a locally produced calendar. That was kind of a shock! You may have to check out the calandars produced in your area.

ge, where is Fragrant Paths out of? I tried to look it up but couldn't find anything...do you have a website?

Willow

Here it is
http://www.fragrantpathseeds.com/product_info.php?products_id=175&osCsid=8bae0c07380ff231a26d796569806a98

I believe Elodie is an asiatic lily. I got her in one of bleeks' co ops. The color is a bit lighter than what the picture shows.

I generally get my seeds from Swallowtail seeds...... I was looking and they do have the larkspur colors split out..... I might have to put in another order with them.....

Willow - I have iris similar to yours as well, but I don't think it is the same thing. Yours' is very pretty though.