April, I love that bulbine. It reminds me a lot of the flowers on my St. John's Wort.
Have you guys ever seen this? It's a great specimen plant with gorgeous yellow flowers and grows extremely well in our area.
Color Coordination Help Requested
I lI like your plan....to plan. That's an important first step.
here is a plant if you're looking for orange. Plant files say four vendors carry this. I have never seen an orange one.
http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/114384.html
I've never seen orange yarrow either but that's pretty. Thanks Vossner!
Please ignore my post that I removed - too many threads open at once and too much switching between them. LOL
This message was edited Jun 23, 2006 10:57 AM
Vos I love that yarrow- never saw it in orange. I don't know why but lately I have been so attracted to orange- I go through phases and I guess this is my orange phase!
April, I know what you mean. I would never have used orange a few years ago, but now I love it - and with pink! Yowie!
Kristi - I thought of another possibility. For yellow - Indian Summer Rudbeckia. It is awesome!
And going a different direction, instead of Dietes bicolor, use Dietes vegeta, or butterfly iris. It's leaves are wider than bicolor, it doesn't get bigger as quickly, but it has white flat blooms with soft purple "falls" that would look great with your other purple and still stand out... One of my favorite plants. It looks like butterflies floating around over it. It is also called the fortnight lily, because it tends to bloom every 10 days. Lots of blooms - one to a scape for a day or two. Then repeated several days later, all growing season. They are really pretty in the landscape, and actually show up better then the soft yellow bicolor.
I see that plantfiles has it listed as Dietes iridoides....
CJ
Edited to add the link!
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/572/index.html
This message was edited Jun 23, 2006 11:22 AM
CJ, with ya on that one, Indian Summer is pretty! I haven't seen the purple Dietes, It sounds pretty too.
It's not purple. It's white with a soft purple "fall".
Okay....I haven't seen the white ones with the soft purple 'fall'. heehee
That Dietes is gorgeous. I'm on a hunt. I was just at HGC and they didn't have any. I'm going to try to get out to Buchanan's next weekend.
Picked up the tangerine bulbine. I love the Rudbeckia but every single time I've planted one I have managed to introduce it to the pearly gates. Over watered, under watered, cats slept on it.
I'm having a huge party for my little sister tomorrow (graduating from the police academy....got her degree in Criminal Justice 2 years ago and now all 95 lbs. of her will be working with the Fort Bend Sheriff's... Ms. "I can't kill a bug!") so I'll have a house full of cops and can't work in my yard until Sunday. Bummer!
Ceejay- Me too, would have told you I hated orange but not now! and oh yeah pink and orange! I love it!
I like mixing colors and then some plants show up more in different seasons, but it's all good! I have seen so many folks w/ impatience who put the red, orange, pink together and I love it. I don't have the shade for it.
Today when driving I was a small house, painted white w/ nice light blue trim and they had planted lots of blue plumbago in front. It looked really nice, very cool and fresh but I doubt that I'd ever be able to keep to that color scheme!
Yeah, I know what you mean. I tried a color scheme once, then I saw things outside the color scheme that I just had to have, and - goodby color scheme! Same thing with the inside of my house.
Me too, my style and colors are what you call eclectic! I was so happy years ago when I found that word, it just sums it all up for me! Before I found it I thought I was weird.
LOL. I know exactly what you mean! Same word! Same realization! LOL
Kristi, So which Dietes are you looking for now? The white or the yellow? I took a picture of my yellow so that you can see how the whole plant looks. None of my whites are in bloom at the moment, but their leaves are a little wider and a little more upright - but their blooms show up better in the landscape. I also have a variegated Dietes grandiflora, but it is new for me this year, and I don't know how it will do. Doing great so far, but I haven't seen any blooms yet.
Here's the Dietes bicolor (yellow)
Ceejay I think the white shows up better too and sort of has an exotic, asian look to it. I didn't know there was a variegated one! WOW!
Here's the Indian Summer Rudbeckia. I sooo love this plant!!
Here's the variegated Dietes grandiflora. They are still in a fan, and no flowering yet. I think I got them at The Arbor Gate this year.
Oh I love the rudbeckia! So pretty! and wow the v. dietes look great, so young yet. I bet they will be fine!
They're both beautiful. Wow! Looking at how big your Dietes is, do you think it will fir in my tiny little bed with the ruellia and duranta?
I think I like the yellow but, there I go again, purple and yellow! I think my brain is hard wired for those colors. Ceejay, your beds are lovely!
April, look what I just found on my passion vine (you warned me!).
Terrible picture.
I found 2 of them. Threw them out in the pasture.
I must have been looking at another picture that I thought was the bulbine right when I compared it to my St. John's Wort. Duh.
knolan - NONONOONONONO! Those are gulf fritillaries (or however you spell that)...They make beautiful butterflies. I grow passion vine just to get them. Oh, boo hoo.....
Well, if I see anymore I'll let 'em munch away. But I didn't smoosh them. Just moved them next door in the pasture. Stuck them on a Chinese Tallow. They can eat all of that they want! I felt a little guilty moving them. Should I go try to find the little critters and put them back? What does the butterfly look like?
They won't eat chinese tallow. They are very plant specific. If you can find them, and bring them back, you might save them. Otherwise, they are dead meat. I'll look for a photo and post it.
Felt so bad I went straight out there and they were exactly as I had left them. Scooped them back onto a papertowel and they have been happily returned to the passion flower. I saw them grin REALLY big and they said, "Thank you Ceejay!" ;>}
Thank you, Kristi!!!
Here's the picture of the butterfly.
http://davesgarden.com/forums/fp.php?pid=2424487
Now that the crisis is over - whew! - how much space do you have between the duranta and ruellia?
Ok I know they are pretty butterflies but they are soo ugly as caterpillars! And they will strip that passion vine clean! I know that CeeJay will go into shock so it might be best if she covers her eyes for a minute- in years past I tried to get rid of them, sprayed them w/ any toxic substance I could find, but it does no good, they will return- they are very hard to kill- now I have one passion vine and it grows with my orchid vine and snail vine, that way I don't notice those ugly little buggers!
Ooooohhh....very pretty Flutterby! Yup, they can eat my vines. We did a butterfky "kit" when I had all the kids. They were painted ladies. It wasso much fun. We had 10 caterpillars and everyone of them grew into a butterfly. What was really awesome was being there at the exact moment when 2 of the turned into chrysallis. that was tooooooo cool.
My husband thinks I'm nuts going back out there and finding them.
Not too much space, maybe a foot all the way around the duranta.
Yes I did get to see the monarchs turn into chrysalls and have just missed the cloudless sulpher- they have the funny hump thing. Have seen them come out and that is pretty cool as well.
I have to say that I am voting w/ your husband!
Those passion vines will come right back. Nature is good that way. Just like the butterfly weed gets eaten up by the monarch cats - it springs right back. If those munching cats killed them, there would be no food left for the next generation, and the whole species would die out. Nature provides. Now just avert your eyes, April, until it's all over. I'm glad you found a solution that will save them from you. LOL
CJ
Well it was the vigor of the passion vine that found the solution. You cannot kill those vines so when you plant one you better like them!
Happy to be back home.
yep- say good bye to all the leaves for a bit!
Okay, here's the bulbine in that bed (not planted yet). What do ya'll think? Picture the duranta much taller soon.
and I decided to hold on to the coreopsis after all. Thinking about it in front of the bower vine......
Oh yes! and the duranta will grow pretty quickly and the seeds on them turn orange so that sort of goes w/ the bulbine! The bulbine spreads, but not really aggressively- you will be able to divide it though- you can give it to family, friends, neighbors if you don't have room for more. I like it very much, it's very pretty- just make sure that you pinch or cut off the flower stem (all of it) once the bloom is gone- it looks so tacky when you don't - my daughter's would never be done if I didn't visit her!