Karen,
They are also tough shrub roses. I think they would be fine.
Good Perennials for Roadside?
Thanks, Dave, I think I will do that then.
Karen
Knockout roses planted along the West Side Highway in New York City do very well. On my roadside in CT, I grow rudbeckias, echinacea, salvia (May Night, Blue Hill), wild DLs (I'm trying to reduce these). I sow corn poppy and Bright Lights cosmos seeds. If we get rain at the right time, they germinate and look great. If I could only keep our Town Maintenance guys from "mowing" the side the road in summer -- they are worse than the deer. A few perennials and wildflowers in front of our rock wall are NOT blocking road visibility. I almost had to laugh -- they carefully avoided the wild DLs I'm trying to exterminate.
Great list of plants! That is too funny - they must assume those are the only ones purposely planted. It always makes me mad when they mow down the wildflowers on the side of the road. Especially since there are hardly any undeveloped areas anymore.Where do they think the hummingbirds, bees, butterflies and other insects are going to get their food if they clear it all out and mow it all down!! If they don't you read 'thumbs down to the highway department for leaving all the weeds on the side of the highway' in the local paper. Bugs me.
Yeah, that bugs me, too, Meridith. We need all the wildflowers we can get. There are certain areas around here along the highways where there are wildflower meadows purposely planted that are not mowed, and there are signs telling the highway department not to mow those areas.
Karen
We have spots along the highway that look like they were planted with wildflowers on purpose, but they do still mow it down a few times. Say goodbye to all the monarch caterpillars on the milkweeds! Maybe I should look into trying to do something about it.
I leave the milkweeds in my gardens for the Monarchs. I like them, actually (milkweeds and Monarchs both).
Karen
I grow milkweeds too, not terribly successfully. :)
Spent some time in NH not too long ago & was pleasantly surprised at how widespread eastern teaberry, Gaultheria procumbens, is. I've rarely seen it here, and I get out into nature quite a bit, and it literally grows as a lawn weed in NH. Low enough to stay under mowers in certain spots I guess.
That's a new one to me too. Now I want to go look it up. I have a bunch of perennial milkweeds and here's my Scarlet Milkweed seedlings for the Monarch's. There are very few things I start a whole 72 cell tray of, but this is one. The Monarchs will eat these down to stems. Along with the all the perennial ones I have. : )
Nice, Merideth. The Monarchs will be very happy.
Karen
I like Yarrow. You can get the cultivated kind in colors but my neighbor and I keep the wild yellow kind in our beds by the street. I have daylilies, iris {tall, bearded, and siberians, sempervivum and my neighbor has tons of the creeping sedums and Hosta. lots of hosta. my side of the road is a hillside. I like all these things because they have great hillside holding root systems. I let the oak leaves sit on them over the winter and the salt and sand are kept off the soil by them. I pull them off about now and there aren't too many so when the cars and the garbage trucks drive over them, it makes short work of the salty leaves.
Martha
Great ideas Martha thank you. I actually have some yarrow seedlings going right now and I think I know where I will put them now. :) I lost a small Mountain Laurel, and an Itea Henry's Garnet near the driveway already. My dh ran them over and they didn't grow back. : ( I like the leave idea, now if I can get dh to go along with it I'll be set.
I am lucky in that my DH has nothing to do with leaf placement or removal at our house. I have always made these decisions and my son, assistant gardener, is like minded so we mulch with oak leaves where we may. We have tons of oak leaves every year that pretty much mulch themselves. We mow them up off the lawn, but leave them on the flower beds. We are in the process of removing them from the beds now. I rake them out, he mows them up and we put the shredded leaves into our compost or mulch trouble spots in the yard.
Martha
I can always move them to my beds after he blows them where he wants. : )
My roadside bed is extremely windy and lined with Maples. The outside edge stays pretty bare, except Mums thrive there. There is heavy road traffic there. I've tried many of the plants listed here and they lay over completely flat from the wind and shade except Echinacea and DayLilies. I'd like something evergreen mixed in. Gaultheria didn't make it there. I tried twice and they are pricey.
It's very dry although getting better as I'm constantly amending the soil and covered it with shredded leaf mulch this year. Most of the mulch ended up inside the tree line or in the grass, but it really helped inside of the tree line. Normal wood mulch migrates out of there as well. Any suggestions? Garden thugs wouldn't work as they might creep into the inside of the tree line, which is coming along nicely. Thanks!!
Goldenrods tend to favor poor soil, & most can take wind & still stand upright. They prefer sun but I see them growing in pretty shady areas too. Some goldenrods are thuggish, but others are not. I have grass-leaved goldenrod and anisescented goldenrod and am trying to propagate old field goldenrod as well.
Thanks, Jsorens. I have a low growing one in full sun that is really nice. I'd like to keep that area as low maintenance as possible as I get so wind burnt working out there. The wind is so fierce today that some of the tulips inside the tree line of that bed about 20' in from the road snapped at ground level.
Saw this for full sun road sides
http://www.highcountrygardens.com/catalog/product/99517/
Chiondoxa would work for a few weeks of spring color. I found some growing on the edge of a salt marsh near me. The soil is pure muck, for a century people dumped coal ashes in this marsh and several times a year the area where the chionodox thrives is under very brackish water. Its also a few hundred feet from the New York/Boston railroad, this part of which was built before the Civil War. Who knows what they tossed in here.
Thanks, David_P. I like the Chiondox. I've been afraid to mix them in my other beds, but they probably would be very good there. I tried Pinks out there but it must have been too dry for them.
Jen, those collections are very nice. I'll research those plants and see if any of them will work in the shade. Dry windy shade is tough! It's a western exposure and in summer only gets light very late in the day.