I grow thalictrum aquilegifolium in part sun situation and it does beautifully. It's ~3ft tall.
I have lots of other thalictrums in the woods which are much smaller - less than a foot tall generally,
including thalictrum ichangense Evening Star as mentioned above.
But for some reason, I haven't had luck with Black Stockings yet.
I planted another one last year - we'll see if it comes back this year.
Here's a picture of aquilegifolium.
I was sooo tempted by martagon lilies last week but "assumed" that they'd just end up leaning or getting blown over.
I haven't had much luck with Filipendulas - have killed it 3 times. 'Kahome', 'Flore Plena' - didn't survive the first year. I think I wasn't attentive enough to get them established well. Is F. hexapetala synonymous for F. vulgaris? I do like the airy demeanor of the Thalictrum flower stems - they don't seem to get blown over like a lot of other tall ones.
I'm curious to see the change (if any) in the quality of light reaching into my back gardens. We had two large oaks in the front taken down late last summer. I'm hoping for more light in the afternoons, perhaps helping those tall beauties that are light-challenged. I did grow some L. siphilitica from your seed, Sharon, and hoping for a little more light for them.
I like that thalictrum aquilegifolium, Weerobin - nice and airy. I don't know what kind mine is, and it has yet to flower for me. Is that pretty maroon that's inbetween aquilegia?
Cindy, sorry to hear about your filipendulas. I'm getting fed up with my string of bad luck with the cimicifugas and thalictrums. I certainly hope for better luck with the filipendulas. I planted some Joe Pye weed that I started from seed a couple of years ago. It did well and flowered last summer, but I thought it was ugly and looked like a weed, so I pulled it out.
My martagon is in quite a shady area, but stayed upright and didn't lean at all. I was amazed. The only thing is that the lily beetles love them, so you have to be vigilant. I intend to get rid of quite a few of my other lilies - mostly the asiatics - this year, as I can't keep after the lily beetles well with the number of lilies I have. I hate to, because I love them, but the least loved will go.
I'm jealous of your more sun. The woman who owns the lot behind my house, which is full of invasive species that come into my yard, as well as weed trees that overhang my yard (and she will not let my tree pruner onto her property to prune the overhang, and I have to climb over the fence to pull back the ivy and pull out the garlic mustard.... as she refuses to do a thing to tend the property - anyway what I wanted to say is that I keep hoping that a few of her trees will blow down in a storm, because that's the only way that I'll get any more light, instead of less and less.
Mmmm! Thanks for the pretty pic, Weerobin.
Cindy - I plucked the seed from a plant grown in a container in complete shade in Framingham MA. Perenniallyme may know - the New England Wildflower Society. I've read mixed accounts on this plant. Of course, where they are in my yard they get little morning sun and no afternoon sun, but straight up full blast 11 a.m. - 2p.m. mid-day blare. They've been there since I grew them from seed in 2009, and I've sworn to move them every year since. They do have the gorgeous purple/chocolate brown coloring, but those receiving the most sun tend to fade in the sun/heat to a brownish yellow. They are prolific bloomers and have grown to at least 5' even under the adverse conditions.
I have plenty of seed if anyone wants to send a SASE. Let me know.
While on an afternoon walk in the blue ridge mountains yesterday on my BF's mother's property I plucked seed pods of some familiar friends and a few not so familiar. One in particular looks like a vervain, but it was in an area where it would receive only a little sun. Natives can tolerate a broader range of conditions, methinks. This was on the edge of a woodland.
Anyway - this IS a great thread, and I'm glad I stumbled across it. :)
A.
Perennially, the purple flowering plant is columbine Black Barlow.
I'm not sure she's so pretty up close,
but she flowers densely enough to make a nice dark foil for lighter colored neighbors.
Here she is...
I was able to find a couple small Spigelia marilandica at local nurseries this summer. The squirrels ate the first one, so I'm hoping the second survives the winter. I planted it in dappled shade on the edge of an almost clearing beneath old oak trees. Will let everyone know if and how it blooms this year!
pereniallyme, I also have several Thalictrum. Believe it or not, but they do better when I DON'T try to take care of them or move them into planned beds =( My Thalictrum rochebrunianum died back after being moved from rocky sun to good soil in part shade.Thalictrum flavum subsp. glaucum was already in that spot and growing okay, but the blooms aren't that exciting. The Thalictrum dioicum do great when left alone among the small trees beneath the oaks. I moved them to a part shade border and lost a few.
Amanda - re: your chocolate seeds - are the Eupatoriums or Thalictrum or ? I've lost track in all of this great discussion of various plants! :) I'm familiar with the New England Wildflower group. Have a propagation book.
perenially - I don't think I'm familiar with the lily beetle but I don't grow as many as you do. I must admit to being the source of some rampant plants here (ivy and Lamium 'Herman's Pride') but my neighbors haven't complained. We have a little unspoken give and take here - one neighbor's Pachysandra strays into one of my beds and the other neighbor's poison ivy seems to invade the other side of my backyard. I do try to pull the stuff back through the chain link fence. I may surrender to the Martagon yet.
Eleven - I don't have a lot of "real" nurseries locally but am drooling over the opportunity to explore some in MI since DD moved to Holland. I wonder if sometimes plants do better in uncultivated ground, maybe making them stronger and better? Not that I'm trying to bestow human characteristics on to plants.
Cindy this is the Eupatorium. I don't have any thalictrum. Yet. :D
Thalictrum 'Black Stockings' and a couple of other shades do well for me in shade, growing 4'-5' tall (need support to stay upright when the flowers come out) with pretty aquilegifolium foliage. 'Black Stockings' blooms white or palest lavender for me; the other two are lavender and deeper lilac with green "stockings". They've given me seedlings to work with after I assisted them, but it took a while.
Filipendula hexapetala is synonymous with F. vulgaris, but the white double-flowered F. hexapetala 'flore plena' offered by Bluestone Perennials is actually F. ulmaria 'flore plena', which has big creamy-white flower heads on 2-3' stalks, tallish foliage (2-3'), and is wonderfully hard to get rid of in sun or part shade once established.
However, the plant I wanted was F. vulgaris (hexapetala) 'flore plenum', which is about half the height and breadth of ulmaria and has pure white corymbs of flowerets arranged in a spiral pattern, like forget-me-not (Myosotis scorpoides).
To compare and contrast, see Lazy S's Farm Nursery's web page for perennials beginning with F: Perennials Starting with F, scroll down to Filipendula and keep going to the end of the many listings.
F. rubra 'Kahome' loves nothing more than to evaporate whenever my soil dries out, though it's fine with being drowned in summer rain at the bottom of my garden. Wet soil that sometimes dries out completely is a pain, and perhaps the full sun is contributing to Kahome's demise. F. ulmaria 'flore plena' laughs at sun in wet or dry soil and keeps overrunning 'Kahome'. Last fall I gave up and moved Kahome to shade. I also transplanted one of the Thalictrum seedlings to Kahome's former home. Let's see if it'll put up with the sun and hold its own against the thuggish F. ulmaria. The only other perennial that holds out there is Siberian iris, unless you count the ground ivy and cleavers.
Amanda, I do know the Garden in the Woods in Framingham, but haven't been there in quite a while. Thanks for reminding me.
Weerobin, I would call your black barlow pretty up close, but then I'm fond of aquilegias of all sorts, just not the self-crosses that occasionally pop up in my garden that are very old underwear off-white.
Eleven, I haven't moved my thalictrums. They just don't seem to like their conditions much, but I'm going to keep trying for a while. I've planted seeds of rochebrunianum and black stockings in WS containers and am keeping them warm for a month before they go out in the cold. I do hope I get some germination, and if I do, I'll probably try them in a slightly sunnier place than the others and see if they do better.
dawnsharon, I have recent sprouts of something that was traded to me as filipendula vulgaris flore pleno/multiplex. Do you think this the one that you describe as 2-3' and wonderfully hard to get rid of? This germinated for me warm, though was supposed to need cold after warm to germinate.
Thinking of seeds, I'm reminded that I have a bunch I collected this year that are just hanging around, as I stopped doing the piggy swap. If any of you shady folks are interested, please send me a dmail with your address. Here's the shade lovers and a few others:
(p.s. not sure what will come true except likely the tricyrtis, which are both species and bloom at slightly different times)
tricyrtis puberula
tricyrtis latifolia
japanese anemone:
whirlwind (a great double white)
kriemhilde (a great double bright pink)
pretty lady diana (a new dwarf single light pink) - not many
pretty lady alice (a new dwarf double bright pink)
anemone sylvestris
aquilegia mix - many kinds
aquilegia "Clementine salmon rose"
lilium pumilum (red-orange)
lilium cernuum
gentiana clausa
gentiana dahurica
All of these seed offers are very tempting but I need to do some major remedial work on a large potential bed this year - getting rid of Campanula rapunculoides - to make room for far-more-desirables. The chocolate Eupatorium would be a star there but I'll have to wait on it.
dawnsharon - thanks for explaining all of the differences between the Filipendulas! Sometimes the variety names are a little confusing.
F. vulgaris flore pleno or multiplex *should* be the smaller one, but you won't really know till it flowers. It's one thing when the names are confusing to buyers, but once the growers and sellers are confused, only the plant knows what it is.
I'm just about to try winter sowing for the first time, mostly using leftover seed I didn't get to plant, in hopes of buying less this year. Have you sprouted Japanese anemones before? Will they bloom first or second year?
I miss the Garden in the Woods like anything. It was a spring ritual -- at least twice each spring, if at all possible. I still have Phlox divaricata "Blue Moon" from them, with petals as broad as a garden phlox. It's easier to find these days, but I wonder from the pictures I've seen whether the flower form is still as good.
And 'speaking' of Anemones. This award winner "Wild Swan" looks and reads spectacularly:
http://mygarden.rhs.org.uk/blogs/graham_rice/archive/2011/05/27/anemone-wild-swan-2011-chelsea-new-plant-of-the-year.aspx
(Note the very long bloom period)
That is one beautiful Anemone! Wonder if it's available in No American yet.
dawnsharon, I believe I sprouted some japanese anemones by wintersowing (maybe a warm period first, but I don't remember), and think I may have had a few sprout warm, but I can't find it in my notes. I believe that my anemone tomentosa robustissima has seeded itself outside, but I could be wrong, as that one spreads a lot underground. It's certainly far more robustissima than the others. This year I'm trying "whirlwind" from seed. I have it in a WS jug and will keep it inside under lights for a month. If it doesn't start sprouting, the jug will go outside for the rest of the winter. I'll let you know what happens, if I remember. I know I've started other types of anemones by wintersowing. Anyway, I don't think the japanese anemones flowered til the 2nd year.
Thanks, perenniallyme! I'm OK with waiting a year if I can get good strong plants by this winter. I keep ordering little starts of them, then leaving them to languish on my front porch until they dry out or drown in rainwater. Sometimes I plant them while they've still got some green leaves, but they get outcompeted by my other shade plants and weeds (ground ivy, Glechoma, wrapping up my borders like a spider). A full-sized Japanese anemone would be big enough to hold its own.
How is the Arnold Arboretum doing?
Hmmm, I haven't been to the arboretum for a while.
Japanese anemones don't like transplanting (they have a sort of tap root), but will survive with lots of water for a while,( til they stop looking wilty). After they're established they need very little care.
Hi Perennial,
Yes, japanese anemones can be tricky, but I actually managed to get several clumps by looking carefully at how they are clustered and digging deeply at the edge of the clump. I had no choice, because I was moving, had tons of Honorine Jobert at my old house, and they are incredibly expensive. I had started with 4 plants in 1998 and they spread delightfully across the front of my house. And wow, you are right, once established they need very little care. My advantage was that I had so many. This shot is of what were originally two plants. They are mirrored on the other side. A total of 4.
I also managed to get a whirbelwind after failing the first time. Oddly enough, the only one I couldn't get was Robustissima, which appeared in my yard - I never planted it. And I could not successfully transplant it.
Try to find the edge of a clump, where plants are clustered together. It seemed easier to get them out there, in a cluster, and replant them.
Lovely, Donna. I tried Honorine Jobert, I think, but it died on me. I've tried lots of japanese anemones and my favorites are Kriemhilde (bright pink double) and Whirlwind (white double). I found a couple of new dwarf varieties last fall that I like a lot - Pretty Lady Diana and Pretty Lady Emily. One looks like a dwarf robustissima - light pink, and the other is a double brighter pink. Can't remember which is which right now. Ones I wouldn't bother with are Prince Henry (unless you can't find Kriemhilde), and Bodnant Burgundy, which I have thought several times was dead and has barely grown in several years. And tomentosa robustissima is best for people with large spaces to fill fast. I'm always digging them out, as they take over.
Isn't it weird what works and what doesn't? I have to keep beating Honorine back. I grow her with pushy plants and she tends to move into any space. Robustissima must be tough becuase it just appeared in my yard. And it placed itself beautifully. Right in the middle of the bed. I have to keep tearing it out. Pic 1
What's really funny is that I ordered cammasia quamash and was sent ornigothalem nutans - a very pushy plant. But lovely. I've spread it to FOUR places. And they tend to bully my thalictrum, which I have to keep digging up and moving around. Pic 2
But what a beautiful combo! Pic 3
Poor thalictrum ! Pic 4
Here is my "September Charm". It was planted in the fall 2010 so last summer was its first full growing season.
That is really beautiful.
This message was edited Feb 14, 2012 12:33 PM
Thanks Donna. I love everything about this flower.
Oooo - I love the 'September charm!' How pretty. :)
I have been looking for a pink anemone to join Honorine and Wirbelwind. It's confusing, because there are so many pink ones. But I think that September Charm is going to be it. Thank you rouge for drawing my attention to such a lovely flower.
hi from manitoba canada zone 3a...... i have a north-facing planter running along the back
of my house, unfortunately the only shade i have.
i seed columbine each year and pop them in any bare spots, but the star of the show is
ligularia rocket, the sun does peek around the corner in late afternoon, and it wilts where
the sun does touch it but it recovers quickly.......LAhybrid lilies seem to do really well too
Wow, that's really beautiful, and it pops against your house. I have noticed that many people with white houses seem confused about what to do with color. Not only are the colors great, but the shapes and forms. I have only recently discover red lilies (yes, LA's are great). The ligularia rocket is great. How many do you have there? (Stealing idea).
Donna
thanks donna.....during the long winter months i read like crazy !
this was an empty lot in 2008, a blank slate to work with...
and i find burgandy looks great against the pale yellow siding...lots of pots of purple
fountain grass, and ninebarks summer wine in the front,
and my shade is filled with palace purple coralbells, hosta blue ivory and the one rocket
hi janina ! i've read through the whole thread now...and see some great suggestions...
calgary is a tough climate....warm chinooks often make it over the mountains and then
it seems like spring has arrived ! here on the prairies we're a slow even thaw but occasionally are surprised with a late frost. one beautiful plant i have seen is native meadow rue. it grows at least 4 feet.. and has a beautiful airy look to it. it is in my first
pic. closest to the railing. i had it tied, and staked as it had finished flowering.
for inspiration i often visit parks and the universities where there are many beds in various locations....the grounds keepers are usually more than happy to answer questions, and taking pics is not a problem. some of the hugest hostas i've seen were at the u of m. remember to keep some paper and a pen in your bag !! best of luck L
Lovely, really lovely. Your seasonal colors move from cool to hot. Very well done. I love good design.
No kidding! I love the dark foliage with the gay colors. :)
thanks so much for the positive comments....it's taken many years to figure things out !
and for every one plant that survived probably three went in the compost ! i only wish i had a forum like this years ago, nothing like plain old-fasioned good advice to help along
the way..........
Wow, a ligularia on steroids. What do you feed that thing??
Mine cranks out a bloom or two, but yours has dozens!!
I'm having a serious case of ligularia-envy...
'morning' weerobin !
this planter got all new soil appr. 2.5 feet deep with a deep gravel base 3 years ago.
from what i've read about ligularia they are a shady moist plant...when i planted it, i added a wheelbarrow load of peat, and never let it dry out..
this planter is stuffed with plants [i hate pulling weeds] and so i fertilize with all-purpose
20-20-20 first thing in the spring....top up with some fresh 3-way mix soil, fertilize again
once the plants are appr. a foot tall, and again late summer so they have enough food to
store for winter. the ligularia is mulched with leaves from the lawn mower in the fall..
it it has bloomed like crazy the last 2 years......i do worry that it may bloom it's self to death !! there is a new smaller version of the rocket available now, as well there is the variety 'othello' that looks pretty cool with round leaves.. the blooms of this plant attract
many insects, including bees, so i would advise to keep away froms areas with kids !
cheers, L
Oh! I forgot Canada lilies. If you don't have the red lily beetle, that is. Mine grow in shade, are 4 - 5 feet tall, and their little pagoda roofs are picturesque in contrast to the shade.
