Continued.. Spring photos and early summer photos.

A closer look

super macro look

Beautiful dragonfly. Lovely photos of your plants. My poor hydrangeas are sagging today in our 100 degree heat. They never quite recover from this much wilt.

I pray for it to cool off for you guys. HUGS BEV

What a pretty shot, Bev. And I love all the hydrangea pics, too. My macrophylla hydrangea did a weird thing this year...I winter protected it with a big box, and all seemed to be going well....then in the Spring, the buds just went into a sort of coma and stopped growing. Some don't look dead even now- they are bright green and plump...just not growing. They've looked the same for about two months now. Every bud or two at the top of every cane grew, and I have dozens of flowers forming at the top of canes, but no new growth from any buds in the middle of the plant...just the very top, and from the bottom. Looks really ridiculous and I'm not sure what to do with it after it blooms to get it normal looking again.


Here is my favorite Heuchera, which blooms from Spring to first frost. Gypsy Dancer

Bridal Veil Astilbe along the back of this bed should bloom soon....can't wait!!

Rodgersia Aesculifolia..I planted this last year and then promptly neglected it. I was happily surprised that it returned this year and even bloomed for me

Beautiful gardens! I have got to get some astilbe. I have coralbells but they do not do to good here and I am in the same zone as you. I don't know!!! This red one with the green leaves does the best and the burgandy but not others.

Bev, I've had some Heuchera struggle, too. I don't know why, either. I just keep at it. At least they aren't like hosta that take forever to get going. This one is "hollywood", which is also supposed to bloom all season. Last year it did squat, pretty much. Looks much nicer this year (third year in the garden), and I hope it keeps going.

Doss
the Dysosma/Podophyllum love it here
mine are about 3 1/2 yrs old now

Dick

Strever, your plant is fascinating! I had never seen one before! Wow!

and they are in bloom NOW :-)

Dick

Well, speaking of hydrangeas... My absolute favorite is the Oak Leaf Hydrangea. Here is a photo of ours.. Second year in our yard. Doing beautifully.. :)

I love hydrangeas! I'm addicted!
Strever....that plant is unbelievable, wow! I started looking for some online...but boy are they expensive! Do you know where these come from??

Here's my stub at plant combinations. This one I kind of worked out myself in the herb patch: greek oregano and feverfew.

This message was edited Jun 24, 2008 12:38 AM

This one is a lucky, I think, accident: liatris and sweet williams.

Enya, I love your liatris combo! Great angle too!

Here is my Jack.....? something Clematis I almost forgot it was out there. It is georgeous this year just like our other three. Quick addiction... But lovely.

Jackamani maybe not spelled right . Here is one. Bev

A little closer.

I love heucheras for the color they bring to the shade - my prime gardening space is shade from light to full :) But I have to agree that heucheras are not like pulmonarias that get ready to be divided in two years for me :)
I'll have too look up that Gypsy dancer if it blooms that consistently and long. I see hummers in my garden, but mostly in passing as I don't have much in bloom :( outside full sun after early June till end of July when hostas show off.

I also have several heucheras. Love the colors they bring to the shade. I have them coupled with my Ligularia collections...

My monstera just after a long-awaited rain yesterday. :)
Deb

Bev, I've also had less than spectacular results with the colorful heuchera cultivars. You might try the newer heuchera cultivars with h. villosa parentage. They're supposed to tolerate our midwest heat / humidity a lot better than the prior fancy cultivars. There are already a lot of the villosa hybrids showing up in plant catalogs this spring. I planted several of them, but of course it's too soon to know how they'll do.

Thank you. I will keep that in mind. BEV

Hello all... I'm fairly new to DG and have been browsing around a lot of the forums to get acquainted with the site. I live in the woods, so this Shady Gardens forum is one of my favorites! I am making an attempt to read all the historical threads - so much info to be found... I've gotten some great ideas from the threads I've read so far - tons of "want to try" from the "Deep Shade" thread and this one. I have a question about the euphorbia(?) in the photo posted by enya_34 on Jun 5. I like the combo (color and form contrasts), but have never heard of euphorbia before. I tried searching in Plant Files, but get a lot of hits with just a general search on "euphorbia" - and nothing looks like the plant in the photo (at least on the first page of hits I looked at). Does anyone know more details about this plant, and/or a link to the Plant File entry? Thanks, terri

Welcome Aspen. You can always Google it. There are tons of differant kinds. BEV

Aspen: Wish I could help, but Euphorbia is still a tempting mystery to me. I look at them and consider bringing them home, then chicken out because I can't figure out where to use them. :)

I'm sure someone will know, and hopefully will answer shortly, but as Bev says, Google's always a good place to start if you haven't found the answer yet on DG. :)
Deb

Welcome Terri, It's always good to have some new ideas around. Sorry I can't help with the euphorbia. There are so many kinds.

Have some pics of my shade garden that I started this spring. It's an area along the back of our property line to the right side of our outdoor shed. The previous owner used this area as a dumping ground for all their limbs, dead shrubs, Christmas trees, leaves, etc. It's right under a huge tree. I spent two full days cleaning it out and have been planting stuff ever since then. The area is surrounded by a plastic chain link "fence". The posts are made out of PVC pipe and topped with 3/4" tees, which the chain runs through. Got everything at Lowe's.
JoAnn

I planted liriope around the perimeter of the area under the chain link fence. It's growing like crazy on the shaded north side of our house so I thought it would do well here as well. I forgot to mention we've only lived here a year since May and we have lots of room for growing stuff, but not much shade except for the back of our property.

This is a pink Azalea bush and bloomed beautifully in the spring. I was too busy to take pictures though and will have to wait til next spring now. This end of the shade garden does get some late afternoon sun.

This holly bush was already here! Boy, was I pleasantly surprised when I uncovered this shrub. It, as well as everything else was covered with a long thorned vine, which was horrible to remove. The tree branches above the area was just weighted down with this thorny vine. I wound up removing several dead limbs from the tree.

A potted Strawberry Candy Daylily on the side that gets the afternoon sun. Wait, I think I have a pic of it in bloom.

Yep, here it is

Very pretty daylily and that area will be very nice when it is filled in. BEV

The bench with a pot of Snapdragons.

Some Stella D'Oro Daylily's. These, too, were growing on the north side of our house and was so heavy I had to thin out the area so this is where they wound up.

This is the more shaded side where I have the Lamium and ferns. The walking stones were made by my family (sisters, grandkids, kids, and inlaws) on my 50th birthday! We shopped at the Pottery in Commerce and bought plates, urns, rocks, marbles; stopped at Lowe's and bought cement and colorant; and spent the afternoon making them in molds I had purchased online a couple weeks before hand. These are priceless to me! Underneath the milk jug dome is a 3" tall Amaryllis that I'm protecting from being stepped upon while I work in the area.

Beacon Silver Lamium.