doss,
i was trying not to have too much lavender due to the color of my siding -- so i did not chose any blue-ish hostas.
One is green/yellow (Pauls Glory) and the Ginko Craig is green with white edges.
If i could find something deep purple, like the purple of an Iris -- that'd I'd plant.
but I'll see how this color scheme goes... wouldnt mind a sharp yellow either.
My lilies are the Orange naturalizing ones.... kind of mondaine - but they fill in nicely.
Landscaping the north side
Purple like an iris in the shade - I'll have to think about that...........
doss, thanks for the site link.
Hi again - just to give an idea, here is a pic of astilbe, hosta, and caladium. Of course, the bed is wider than yours, but it can give you an idea of timing. It was taken on June 23 and the white astilbe is fading, while the pink is in full bloom. The hosta are not at full growth yet, and the caladium are just beginning. On the right is a Bleeding Heart. The next pic will be the same bed in early August -
This message was edited Mar 8, 2007 3:56 PM
Same bed, August 6 -
dax -- you know i just love your gardens!! again -- very envious.
so -- if i had different colored astilbes, I'd have color longer in the season since they bloom at different times??
Yep - there are early, mid, and late ones. Here's some info - these are all Astilbe -
Deutschland (White) and Fanal (Red) - May/June
Ostrich Plume (Pink drooping tresses) - June
Taquetil Hybrids (Lilac) - July/August
Those are the ones I have, and they are a good size. Here is a pic of Fanal -
I noticed today that my Bleeding Heart has started to sprout. YAY. it's a start. Couldn't really tell with my Lily of the Valley. Ferns - definitely not yet.
My bleeding hearts are still under about 6 inches of icy snow. What a difference a zone makes.
Mine are too, and according to the zone map I am in zone 5a ;)
My bleeding hearts are under a couple feet of snow, but I expect that to be gone by Friday at the latest.. :)
It's 10:07 am and it's already 51 F. out... :)
10:44 and 61°
72° is predicted high.
You know the nation Is all warm, because no one is posting on my thread watchers but the Prayer requests, so they all must be doing yard and garden stuff. Bleeding hearts are indoor plants here. lol I can`t think of them as outside at all.
My hellebores are blooming right now and I'm thinking that those dusky shades of rose would look good with your siding.
Are you talking to me doss?
Anyone can grow Hellebores - at least I think so. They stay evergreen in the snow and grow great here. The only way you can really kill them is too much TLC - overwatering supposedly and I haven't had any trouble with that. I've got one in full afternoon sun and some in total deep shade. I get some leaf burn on the one in sun though. It's sitting right next to daylilies that bloom well.
helln... i'm thinking "me" since i mentioned the color of my siding - posted in an image above.
with the weather this warm today -- i just wanna run out and buy plants -- but this weekend is gonna be "back to reality"
i was at Sams today, eying their 'plants in a box'
i actually had a hosta in my hand.... but thought better of it, and put it back.... I did buy a huge bag of Miracle Gro potting soil, the one that holds into water (cant recall what it's called) but for less than $11, i couldnt pass it up.
thanks doss -- i may look into some.
I grow a variety of cimcifuga that is a dark purple hue (more reddish purple than blueish purple)--tall w/ white flowers in the fall. I LOVE the foliage. They can get to be sizeable plants--so it would need some room--but I could see certain coleus as attractive neighbors for the first couple years.
Are those the things that look like the tops of pineapples sticking out of the ground. If so I see them at our Cinemark theatre all over so they must do ok in heat too. Or is this a different thing. I need to look it up but i am so tired from gardening.
If you already know this, please forgive me....
Yep, don't buy hostas at package stores. You should really only order them on line from hosta specialists and then only some. Some hostas are infected with a disease called HVX virus and it can infect every hosta in your garden. The only thing to do when you get the virus is to throw them away.
Sadly, the big package stores are notorious for not knowing what they are doing in relationship to the hosta virus, although people are finding it in good local garden centers too.
thanks for the reminder doss... and a week or so ago i found that thread on the virus... even changed my hosta order with BlueStone because of it.
Glad that you put it back! I know that it's Sooooo... tempting sometimes. And I'm glad that you found the thread. It's just recently been bumped.
doss -- since i started the thread (long ago) it's still in my watch list.
and yes -- it can be tempting, especially when the weather is nice enough that you just wanna go out and dig in the dirt. Being in CA, i bet your weather is much nicer than here. ... been warm there lately as i recall. (DH was in LA yesterday -- commented on the warmth)
I did good in restraining myself today -- hopefully i can hold strong til i get my shipments in about 4-6 weeks.
I have purchased things before at Sams - and they never did well (survived) but since finding this site, i've learned A LOT.
kinda like - you get what you pay for.....
terese
terese - It is beautiful here with weather in the high 70's. Daffodils are finished but the hostas and Japanese Maples are beginning to leaf out.
I'm proud of you for restraining yourself. There are good deals at the box stores. You just have to know what you're looking at.
Here in Maidson, WI snow was gone in a matter of 2-3 days, but the ground is still frozen.
My garden looks pretty sad right now. So far it's only Carex morrowii are as green as
they went under snow in last fall. I live on a school street, so lots of candy wrappers came
out from under the snow :)
I have a north side bed about 20 ft. long and very narrow....(and I don't want anything low for the rattlesnakes to hide)..so i bought Firespike which love shade and bloom the greatest red in the world..let me see if i can find it in plantfiles... I can't use the Plant files unless i know the botanical name which i don't.....if anyone can look it up, it is a great great plant.....a tender perennial....
I found it!!! yeah and it is hardy down to a lower zone.
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/1854/
bettygail, if you need to find things in the plantfiles I find this page easiest. I keep it in my favorites. The other thing is you can often find plantfile information by googling the plant.
http://davesgarden.com/pf/search.php
terese
Did I read your original post correctly that you have "naturalizing" daylilies in that bed at one end?
If you do.... I would do your best to dig them out of there. Try to get every single little piece of root.
The orange "road" or "ditch" lilies spread by sending out roots quite far from the original plants. They are quite invasive. The modern hybrids do not spread like the ditch daylily. The old ditch lily only has 4-6 blooms per scape anyway. You can move them somewhere that you mow around to keep them contained.
I am afraid if you don't move them before you plant some other "good" stuff in there... in a couple years the ditch lilies will have overtaken the other plants. I have a small patch I have been trying to kill for several years. It's in a woodsy area where it's way to hard to dig them up. I have tried many things and they still keep coming back. They are right up there with yucca to get rid of.
>>They are right up there with yucca to get rid of.
Been there, tried that, and failed... i was tempted to pour gasoline on them to get rid of them... but we ended up moving.
yes, they are the "ditch" lilies. They've been in that spot for 5.5 yrs now... they haven't spread too bad yet...
Maybe i will pull them all up and move'em.
thanks for the tip. I've had these for eons, and never noticed they were invasive.
terese
Just stumbled onto this thread. I have a similar bed on the north side of our house - unfortunately, the house faces north, so the "dead bed" as we call it is right along the front walk. I dug it all out and replated it last spring, and by the end of the season it was coming along pretty nicely. I planted epimediums, purple palace heuchera, sweet woodruff and some hostas that I split from the back shade beds. I'm interested to see how it looks when the weather warms up.
I have a zillion of thos blasted ditch lilies. Litterally beds full of them. We've been in this house for 5 years, and I've been digging them out one bed at a time. I made the mistake of putting some in my compost bin - the thrived. Now they go in the burn pile, and amazingly there are some sprouting out of the black spot already this year. I still have sports coming up in the perennial border that I planted the first year we were here. I have a new technique for these - cut the bottom off of a water bottle, put it over the invader, spray round-up into the top of the bottle, and leave it on to bake the poison in for a day or two. Works great, and I can kill them right next to the plants I want.
That sounds like a great method of getting rid of things like that.
Your new bed sounds as if it's going to be wonderful.
yanno -- thinking about it... i can yank them all, and put them back by the highway fence, where i dont care if they get invasive... and get more HOSTAS!! it's a pretty good sized corner... at least for my flower beds.
OK -- i went out today and dug up over 75% of the lilies i had there (now there's just a big hole) I still may take out more.....
but when i was moving them to the back field, i wanted to toss some compost in the bottom of the holes... I'm fishing around in my composter, grabbed a handful and kind of smashed it a lil... and gosh darn it, it was a disgusting - slimy stinky (putrid) mess... and in the middle of it was a chicken bone!!
my neighbor is putting meat scraps in my bin!! I was soooooooo grossed out.
then my dog smelled it and starting digging in the dirt where the compost was..... what a mess.
my neighbor is a very sweet gal.... but i will have to explain that she can't put left over bones or any meat in the compost.
UUUGGGGGG!
Just took this photo of one of the shade beds that I've been working on for some time. It's coming along finally! So I found a problem with the hellbore but only the one in the foreground - it was totally covered with aphids, even on the inside of the petals. Yuchhhh. Got rid of them quickly.
Euwww - you just GROSSED me out, Terese, - kind of like seeing my beautiful sweetheart of a baby (Sherlock, bassett hound) innocently looking at me from the backyard with a full grown bunny rabbit hanging out of his mouth! Swinging the poor dead thing back and forth like it was a grand trophy! Arrrgh - it was bigger than one of our cats! Then, I had to leave for a meeting (telling my son to watch out for him) and when I came back - guess what! I found it headless in the middle of our bed ---- seems the darling son didn't NOTICE when Sherlock brought it in the house - guess who had to pick it up and dispose of it - my DH just couldn't handle it, so it was ME ---EUWWWWW! Dax
Doss: Gorgeous! (Spoken with envy.) If my little shade garden project looks even half as nice as yours this season, I'll be thrilled.
Deb
Dax, I'm trying caladiums for the first time. Do you start them inside and then put them out?
doss -- gorgeous garden. you and dax's are outstanding.
and dax... yeah -- it was the nastiest.
and so far, i dont think Bud has caught and killed anything... but at our old house - we had a dog door in our bedroom that led into the back.... well, one morning, there was a rabbit crashing about my house. Ole Rex just brought him in. I recall another time, he "handed" me some animal.... i'm sure it was another rabbit. oh, then there was the squirrel.... dogs and their "trophies".....
well. i will be getting my first delivery of plants this week... hopefully tomorrow or wed. I've been digging and trying to prepare the bed a bit on the north side....