I am a master gardener and one of my assigned projects is to plant a garden to breast cancer awarness. It is a fairly large area in the middle of a church parking lot. We are zone 5 border a/b. We thought it should be a bit formal and have chosen a zillion flowers. I guess my question to you is your opinion on the best you have experienced with the least maintanence. Remember think pink and flowering from spring to fall. This garden will be the first of it's kind in my city. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Dendra
Breast Cancer Garden
Maybe you could give a list of the flowers you've chosen and then people could tell you which ones out of that list they have had great success with. Are the plants supposed to be beneficial to female hormones?
Definitely need to consider a lot of Pink and White tones!
"eyes"
What a neat idea! Are you going to use containers? Otherwise, I bet you'd get more responses in a different forum, maybe garden talk..or I dont know.
Some low maintenance pink or white plants I can think of are...pentas, zinia, gazania, aster, milkweed, purple coneflower, mums, hmm my brain is running low now. :) You can go into the PDB in Advanced search and limit your search to the pink or white, and specify the height, exposure, hardiness etc you want. Hope this helps
Susanne
You might consider the dwarf, and less aggressive, pink Ruellia 'Bonita'™ or ‘Katie’s Pink’ and the white cultivar known as ‘White Ruffles’ or ‘Katie’s White.’
They grow to around 6" tall (contrary to what PD says), are maintenance-free, great for xeriscaping and would probably act as an annual in your climate. Here they are $1.69 for a 4" pot, which makes them affordable.
You can read about them at
http://www.nhg.com/news/May2001.htm
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/cemap/ruellia/ruellia.html
http://sd1new.net/GardenPages/mexican_petunia.htm
http://www.plantanswers.com/12_mos_xeriscape_/apr.htm
http://www.greenbeam.com/features/plant012599.stm
Love the idea!!! A relatively young woman at our small church was just this last week diagnosed with a virulent form of breast cancer. I'm going to borrow your idea and suggest we plant a Breast Cancer Garden in one of our church's atriums in support of her upcoming battle.
Wish you the best of luck with y'all's!
Dendra,
Being a recent breast cancer survivor, i'd love to help you with your awareness garden.
I've got white ruellia i could send, also maybe a cutting or 2 of a pink brug...just would need time to root it.
if youre interested email me.
i just started radiation therapy today...woohoo only 31 to go
jen
((hugs)) thanks..
Dear Dendra,
You've probably already thought of these, but, I've had extremely good fortune with Bacopa "sutera cordata", they're wonderful trailing stems, with the delicate white flowers. I bought mine in late April , and they are still beautiful. I have them in hanging pots, but I would imagine that they could be grown in beds. They're only draw back may be the need for quite a bit of water. Your garden sounds like a wonderful idea!! dixi smith