Any ideas on what to plant?

I live on the border of eastern Oregon and Southwestern Idaho. We have hot summers and cold, freezing winters. The soil is good in this area as it is a farming area, but I am not sure if it is alkaline or what. I recently had a foundation put on my manufactured home and had the contractor build me flower box like areas in front of the foundation. I want to plant big bright flowers in them so they will look like they are growing wild(in other word I do not want neat little rows!) I love oriental poppies and plan to have big orange ones and I also love giant tulips. However they pretty much bloom inthe spring and are gone by summer. Do you have any ideas as to what other tall, bright flowers I could plant along with these so I will have flowers blooming all through the summer?

Oops forgot to ask this too. On one side of the house that gets full sun in the morning, I plan to plant rose bushes but I also wanted to stagger them with some other bush in a kind of zig zag manner. Any suggestions on what type of plant or bush might grow well around roses and also look good?

Peonies.

ok chihauha but to which question are you responding? the one about flowers or the one about the roses? LOL And if it is for the flower question-- are peonies tall flowers?

Sorry, peonies with roses. Also baby's breath.

For the summer boxes, you have a lot of choices. Annuals like zinnias and marigolds, or dahlias, if the boxes are big enough. Cleome looks very wild-ish, and has a delicate effect. Coreopsis, blanket flower (Gaillardia), cosmos.

If you want perennials, there are also a lot of choices - but you'll have to baby them more, depending on the size of the boxes and whether they are open-bottom on the ground or not.

i was gonna say babys breath also.

peonies will "bush" out when matured. 2.5' tall x 2.5-3' wide.

when i'm looking for something in particular - but not sure what i want/need, i will go to a "nursery" site and do a search.. many will have filters you can do... like -- bloom time, zone, sun exposure, height, etc.
so you could find something that blooms all season, will survive in your zone and be for full sun.
I tend to use SpringHills site since i'm so used to it... though i dont always shop there.(But have a lot in the past)
http://springhillnursery.com/Default.asp?

Bluestone has a similar service: http://www.bluestoneperennials.com/b/bp/adv_search_mod.html?id=p7iMHXzI

Two others I haven't used but which look helpful are here:
BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/
Simply Beautiful Gardens: http://www.simplybeautifulgardens.com/find_plant.aspx

Oh, and I almost forgot BH&G's search, this one I have used:
http://www.bhg.com/bhg/plantfinder/search/pfAdvanceSearchForm.jsp

This message was edited Mar 30, 2007 8:37 AM

Thanks for the advice. I think I should clarify the flower box thing though. They are not actually window type flower boxes. When you put a foundation on an existing manufactured home, the contractor is required to put 8 t0 12 inches of soil around the foundation (not sure why but my guess is to give more support. Anyway instead of having him just pile the dirt up, I had him put treated pine 4x4's around the dirt so it would look nicer and so I could plant flowers around the foundation. So I guess what I am talking about is a foundation garden--not flower boxes. I will try to post pics of my yard as soon as possible.

if those "boxes" are raised... i'd get something like a creeping phlox that would drape over, or even do wave petunias (though they are annuals) -- anything that would drape over and give color all season would look fabulous.

They gave you wonderful ideas. What did you end up choosing?