What plant can't you live without?

Oooh, Lucy! I could have sent you the 500 LOTV that I killed with Roundup this summer. But if you have one plant, you'll have your own 500 in about a year. LOL

Love all the flowers listed and shown.

Several staples I can not imagine our gardens without are the usual standards like day lilies, hosta, iris, purple cone flow and black eyes susans. Also like lamium very much. It is a variegated-leaf ground cover that gets a pink or purple flower. Quite prolific and no weeds in those beds. Right now we are enjoying our "Autumn Joy" sedums in the front yard very much and still have blooms on the coreoposis and "Knock-Out" hedge roses.

Sounds like your gardens are quite pretty, Dave. Enjoy them while you can!!! :)

Don't worry, have plenty Lof V here.

My MIL has Lily Of The Valley in one of her gardens and it is quite prolific. We have never had luck with that plant for some reason.

When I hear the name of that plant, I always think of the old church hymn with the words "He's the lily of the valley, the bright and morning star. He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul..." ☺

I like that hymn.

Haven't heard that one... not in our hymnal.....I rip out LOV every spring, but I still have some in memory of my Gram....

I may take them off a path, but let them be rampet on thir own. Too shady there for irises.☺

They don't mind shade, so that sounds like a good plan, Lucy - given that the iris's wouldn't be happy there. :)

Delphiums and roses. Sorry, had to do both because I've been trying to re-create the picture I had in my mind as a child when my mother read the A.A. Milne poem about "delphiniums blue and geraniums red." I don't care for geraniums but LOVE the red of Europeeana or Climbing Dublin Bay. Delphs have been a big struggle until I've finally found out what to do about slugs and earwigs!

LAS

My delphs are short lived but I love them anyway......

Always heartbroken when the lily season is bad, but the peonies never let me down.

This time of year, when everything else has quit, I have to mention monkshead. It grows tall enough to reach the window and I gaze out at that incredible blue as I watch the leaves fall.

Maybe my summer blue delph succumbed to slugs! One day it was gorgeous and the next it was all gone! Dead! Black! Ugly! Gone! I was so sad!

Oooh....not good, Louise. I had a late blooming monkshood, but since it has disappeared, the airedale must have dug it out....my other monkshood blooms early.....

I have had a clump of Monkshood. It always starts growing really well--nice and green.
Then--towards the end of summer--it starts browning out--the leaves just get dry and brown.
By late september--whole sections of the clump just rot off and die. I pull them up and there are NO roots!

I have it in 2 places--and the same thing happens to both of them.
Both get part sun. One gets good AM sun until about 2PM.
Neither gets excessive water. The soil is well draining. I seldom see any blooms.

Would it help if I dug up the roots and kept them dormant for the winter?

Help????? Gita

Wow....almost sounds like something is eating the roots, but the whole plant is very poisonous.....my remaining plant gets sun for a half day....the late blooming one was in the shade....maybe they're just short lived perennials....

DonnieBrook,

For years (decades?) I struggled with delphs getting brown and dying before they got big. I used Sluggo, but they grow in front of a rock wall. Then I read about copper. Put a ring of copper flashing around each delph and MAGIC!

It took me another year to figure out that the devestation wreaked upon the second growth in late summer came from earwighs. Fortunately we now have Sluggo-Plus, with spinosad. Magic again!!!

Wow....sounds like it's something to try.....can you buy the copper in Home Depot?

Oh, thank you for that info, LAS! I will make it a point to find both when we return to NH in the spring! I really loved that Summer Blue, and will have to find another one..

Yes, I got my roll of copper at home depot. One roll should do you for years. Of course once the ring is made, it will certainly outlast the plant. After some trial and error I've learned to use about 1.5 inches. I have my hubby saw tin cans into 1.5" rings and paper clip the copper around them. That way they don't get accidentally smashed flat.

Good luck!!

Thanks!