Help with trilliums and hardy orchids. Please!

Love the pink! Is the last one Roguchi? I think it's spelled several different ways.

I also grow the 'herbaceous' clematis and I really love those as well. I will search for some photos.

While searching, I had this one in 2007. It is no more.

Rooguchi has to be a favorite of mine. I saw it last summer at the home of a woman who lives just outside Woodinville. It wasn't a large property, but she'd designed it beautifully. Of course, my camera battery died just after I got there . I toy with the idea of stopping by this summer, but that's probably too much, eh? Oh well, I have my own Rooguchi now . . .

Oops. Adding that photo was a mistake - I'd been looking for a picture of Rooguchi . . .

Melissa - Clematis aren't so finicky that they'd "leave" if your soil was less than perfect. It has to be the voles or something else . . .

Here's one. Clematis heracleifolia. Love it. It gets to be about 5 feet tall. I divided it this year to make a larger swathe of it.
Come to think of it, I'll bet I lost that clematis to the voles.

Ah. Great minds and all of that jazz...

Yes, Kathy, we cross posted. That's one of my favorite clematis, too. I think we are on the right track about the voles and now that I think on it, my roses are not doing so hot in those beds. I am thinking I will dig them up and replant in gravel before it is too late. I would be sorely displeased were I to lose these roses to those little beasties.

This message was edited Feb 9, 2010 11:32 PM

I started a Clematis thread earlier this evening - so we'd be able to find this discussion later on. Feel free to post there, too.

Da_n voles!!

You said it! One more garden chore that I didn't really want to have to do. Digging up roses is not my idea of fun. Thanks for starting the other thread. We completely derailed Julie's hardy orchid thread. I hope mine come up this year.

Julie has happily been catching up with the derailed thread! I love to see the pics of the clems. They have always been a favorite of mine in the garden, but I have to be oober vigilant here when I plant a new baby because I have lost bunches of them to slugs. I had never been brave enough to mail order them before, and my Heronswood experience kind of cemented that it wasn't a good idea. Now I have the clem world at my fingertips again with someone who sounds like they would send me a healthy plant.... JOY! **Skips off to find the clematis thread.....***

Julie, don't let the Heronswood experience get you down. There are plenty of good mail order companies out there. One thing I've learned from hard experience ordering mailorder, though, is that when I order things from areas that are not like my zone, like down in California, the things don't do as well. Annie's Annuals, for instance, has glorious plants, well packaged, well grown. But I've lost so many of them it's crazy. It's my fault, not theirs, because they just have a warmer zone than I do and the plants are used to that. So I need to baby them more than I do. So they die. Then I'm mad. I imagine when things are grown in areas where they have a harder, drier winter, it might be the same story. Anyway, I admit to harboring a strong irritation against the owners of that nursery because of the way the closed down the real nursery and gardens here and how they treated the staff, Dan, and the property. It was just completely wrong.

Well, off to work. I spent part of the morning pricking out little ornamental grass seedlings. Yea!

I'm just going to take the liberty of posting other woodland flower pictures here. I think I've mentioned how excited I am about my Hepatica from Mt. Tahoma last Fall. I knew I wanted Hepatica, but relied on Rick to recommend which I should get. He did great by me. Here's my baby this spring - I have two of them and they are going crazy budding out - much tougher a plant than I realized. After blooming, I'm going to put them in gallon containers and set them 3/4 into the ground into a nice spot. I'm hoping that will protect them from the slugs while they grow this year.

I have two blossoms out, one more up and one on the way. My camera's broken, so it isn't taking great pictures and the lighting kind of washes out the color. These blossoms are a nice, bright magenta. Hepatica nobilis x cremar. What a great plant!

Beautiful!

Hi there, So was was into rare hepaticas for about 5 minutes. I found a cool wholesale nursery in japan. I need special passwords to get on the site. I got on most of them were priced 1,500 dollars and up. He told me some of them had sold for 30,000 dollars at auction and I had to be interviewed to even buy one. That nipped that plant pretty quick. I do have some like your Katie this year.

On the hardy orchids I have some for sale here and have been told by some nerds that in planting the orchids the roots need to be spread out flat on the soil like a starfish. Heronswood I guess had trouble because they used the band pots directing the roots down. Very very good drainage and spread flat. I have some beauties here. Slug watch on some. I have a few new variates this year.

Love them Heidi

Thanks for the input Heidi! I will have to admit being a little perplexed as to how to plant the epimediums when I took them out of the packages. They were the oddest little tubers/root systems that I have seen in a long time. Planting them like a starfish totally makes sense, and that's basically what I did when I potted them. We definitely need to make a trip back out to your place soon!

Epimediums do great under limbed up cedar trees . . .

Heidi, I know that Rick does a lot of his own propagation - he was grafting daphnes when we went to visit last time. His prices were pretty darned awesome compared to others. I originally went in order to get a Paris Polyphylla, which is hard to find and ?>

Just one thing on the clematis and they are pretty. I planted a yellow fall blooming clematis in a maple that is a pretty lace leaf maybe 12 feet tall. Last winter in all the snow the clematis made a huge net in the top of the maple and broke huge branches. Then in pulling out the broken branches I broke even more because the clematis was in everything. I don't think I would plant one in a pretty smaller tree. Maybe a big tree.

OOH, good point. That must have hurt.