I guess I am wondering what ya'll's favorites are....Help me build my gardens please :)
If I HAD to plant any flower/veg/plant, what would u suggest
What colors do you like?
Anything but purple :) Wife doesn't like it and happy wife, happy life!! Besides, I want to know everone elses favorites.
I love roses lilies daylilys tomatoes herbs hostas I could go on and on once you get started its hard to stop ;0) if you like it try it !!!
Gloria
omg a favorite!
I like daylies
Iris
Hosta
Coral bells -newest addiction
Roses
Lillies
Tomatoes =cherokee purple is top of the list
Peas-they are so good to just sit and munch with the kids!
Corn-gotta have corn!
My very very favorite fragrance and the one i would have to have if only one flower was allowed
Night Scented Stock (your wife will love this one)
I can see if i have a few seeds left :)
Double red Knockout rose
honeysuckle vine
asparagus
With 3 young boys running around...
Daylilies (for sun)
Hosta (for shade)
Super Sweet 100 Tomatoes (for a treat!)
Mary Ellen
Bleeding Heart
Lily of the Valley
Purple Coneflower
Butterfly Bush
Cosmos
Coral Bells
Sedum
Peony
Siberian Iris
Rose
Bishop's Wort
Columbine
Clematis
Hydrangea
Lady's Mantle near door so you can see the water droplets as you pass on wet days
an herb garden just outside the back door for cooking
See I just can't pick one. But I left out all the purples--I have a lot! LOL
purples n and bright orange-she might like
Or do what the catalogs do-call them BLUE!
I hate that they call purple things blue!!...lol...
A lot of great ideas. Does anyone have a plant that is a favorite to grow???
all of the above ;0)
Gloria
Mrs. Glevely,
With all do respect ma'am, lol, that was a lazy answer :)
I love daylilies (i should with 650 varieties in my yard), ornamental grasses -they are so graceful swaying in the breeze with their plumes in the fall especially since there aren't a whole lot if things blooming in the fall. Japanese Anenome bloom in the late summer and the fall, too and are quite pretty. They will seed around a little or run a bit underground, but just dig and give away. Roses are nice, too, but they can take quite a bit of work if you want them disease free. Heucheras are great in shadier spots and also Japanese painted ferns. Then there are the flowering shrubs. Do we want to get into that, too? I have all these and love every one of them. It's very hard to pin my choice down to just one.
I love to grow any thing Kris just so I can watch it grow its a wonderment to me and I love it so all of the above ;0)
Gloria
What really pops when I walk through my house and get quick glances out my windows is the three Knock-Out Roses. I bought mine before the doubles became available; they are the original Knock-Out Rose. If I could tweak them, I'd wish they were doubles. And maybe a little teeny bit more of a raspberry-red, because my color scheme is purples, purple-blues, blues, reddish-purples, burgundy, mauves, and pinks, with splashes of clear yellow (no gold) and white. The cherry-red of the Knock-Out Rose is okay, though. Many of my other roses suffer from black spot and Japanese beetles, but the Knock-Out's are trouble free. . . and they seem to be hardier than many of my other roses, too.
By the way, my favorite annual: Victoria Blue salvia, no deadheading needed.
I also like larkspur which self-sows here and there.
Woops, I guess I also have trouble naming just one. . .
I love delphiniums but have not yet mastered what it takes to grow them. In my gardening books, what makes my heart leap are delphiniums, foxgloves, and roses. . . the typical cottage garden scene.
It really isn't fair to ask us to pick just ONE plant. It all depends on WHY you are choosing a plant. Are you wanting to feed your body or your soul? You also have to take into consideration your garden conditions as to what plant would be happy there. Are you sunny or shady? Is your soil sandy or clay? Is your zone appropriate for the plant you desire? I was crazy about the tall plumes of pampas grass I saw down South on vacation. I just HAD to have it. I got a mature clump and got three plumes that year. I covered it all up really well for winter and because we had an El Nino winter it lived! It went on to live three more years. At the end of it's life it had produced 82 plumes. Yes, I counted them. :) It was the crowing glory of my front yard. Strangers would stop and knock on my door to ask what that was and where could they get some. Sadly, it did die. Why? Because it was out of it's range for temperature. You have to meet all the conditions for where your garden is. You can only fool mother nature so long.
Another consideration in picking a favorite plant is how much time do YOU have to devote to it's care? What is your lifestyle? Do you want a formal garden that you preen 20 hours a week to keep it looking beautiful? Are you working full time and desire to do things other than gardening when you have time off on the weekends? Then, you must have a carefree plant that can pretty much take care of itself. Some folks live in their gardens and will pick high maintenance plants and love every minute of caring for them. Their garden is their life. What kind of gardener do you want to be? Do you want a easy carefree garden design with minimal care?
You also must consider your personal taste. Do you like bold, bright colors or do you prefer cool relaxing colors that blend in together to produce a shady, relaxing place to sit? You will get the most bank for your color buck out of annuals...........plants you have to buy each year and plant. If you wish to invest in plants that come back each year then go for the more pricey perennials. Buy the smaller pots because they will grow fast and you can divide them and make more plants. Do you like borders? It's much cheaper to grow border perennials from seed rather than buying so many of one plant. I did that for lamb's ear. I grew a flat of them easily and they multiplied.
If you are just starting out I would recommend you get your "bones" in first. These are your landscape trees and bushes or shurbs. They take the longest to mature. Do you want shade in the summer and sun in the winter? Then pick a nice tree that loses it's leaves in the fall rather than a pine tree that doesn't shed it's needles. Do you want a tree that blooms? Rather than trees would you rather invest in things like lilac bushes? Do you want to invest in trellis here or there or a garden gate or ornamental fencing? Do you want to plant an annual vine on it or a perennial vine like clematis? It's all individual. Be sure you and your wife are on the same page as to what you wish to achieve. Start small. Design one bed and put a lot of thought into that one bed. Each year work on a different area. Not only will you not become overwhelmed but it will be less work and less money. If you try to dig up the whole yard and do too much at once you will get overwhelmed and wind up with a modge podge you won't be happy with.
Look around and find things you already own you can covert into planters or use for garden art. I took an old metal ice cream chair and painted it and replaced the seed with a basket and planted flowers in it. Maybe you have a nice birdbath or a Shepherds hook with a birdhouse hung from it or some wind chimes. Maybe you want a "theme" garden. I've seen an all white garden before that was stunning. A friend build a garden spot around an old wood boat and filled it with dirt and planted blue flowers around the outside to resemble water and plants inside of it. It had a clump of wood tied with a wood seagull sitting on top. Your imagination can run wild. I have a memorial garden for my deceased furbabies. I have a cement garden bench and a cement angel there along with other momentos and plants.
I have a favorite tree. It's a tri-colored beech tree. It is slow growing. I had to leave my mature one at my old house when we moved and I grieved for it. I've planted two new ones here at the farm but it will be years before they will look spectacular. I can't have my favorite dogwood here because they don't grow well here. I try to stay within the requirements of my growing zone.
We like to grow our own fruit and vegetables so we have 27 apple trees, two pear, two peach, two plum and two cherry trees. We have 5 more new apple trees coming in a few weeks. We have a 30' x 50' vegetable garden. Growing your own food is an individual thing though and may not interest you and your wife. We didn't really get into it till we retired. Oh, we always had a few tomato plants but that was about it. Now, we're serious about it and learning and loving it.
In the beginning as a new gardener I was what I'll refer to as a "collector". I had to have at least one of everything I saw. I also looked to others trying to figure out what was the best thing out there. Over the years I lost that "collector" obsession and learned that for ME.............I liked simple. I like mass plantings of one kind of flower. I like borders. I have a mixed border of lavender plants with snow in summer climbing down the rocks of the raised bed. I have a whole row of one color daylily and another row of one kind of iris. I have a back border of tall monkshood and intermixed I have some peonies , salvias and other plants.........but the "eye" willl unifiy the bed by the repeating of one plant/color. I also mix in a border row of purple wave petunias because you can so much bang for your buck with them. I no longer try to have one of everything and mix it all up.
For me, I like plants that are easy and only require a fall cleanup and a good mulching in the spring with a little organic fertilizer. I don't want to be out there weekly weeding so I put down a thick layer of mulch. Every plant is my favorite when it's blooming and I try to stagger the perennials I have so that when one is done blooming another picks up the pace and opens up to bloom. Time of blooming is important and takes practice to figure out. You don't want all your plants to bloom early in the spring then be done. You want to stagger bloom time over the whole growing season right up till fall. The few annuals you put here and there will cover nicely if there is a lull in the blooming. You see, perennials only bloom for a while.........some longer than others. If you choose a flower only because of it's bloom then when it's bloom is gone you will be disappointed. I like the bloom of the iris for example.............but also like its tall strappy leaves as well. You want to pick plants that have interesting form as well as bloom.
I don't like plants I have to stake. I live in a very windy area and need strong stems that will hold up to that. I have better things to do than babysit plants by tieing them up or staking them up. They have to fend for themselvs. I love hosta but not for it's bloom. I like it for it's form and beautiful leaves.
I have a problem you may not have. Deer & rabbits. I prefer to select plants they don't like for the mostpart. It just makes life easier for me. I love catmint. It blooms all summer and makes a nice border along my ditch and the deer won't touch the stuff. Perfect perennial for me. It just needs a spring haircut then it can take care of itself the rest of the year. It's drought tolerant as well. Perfect plant. It's purple though. :) Looks great planted en masse.
My favorite annual flower is Victoria Blue salvia just like Ella chose. I also love the wave petunias. They are bold and spread out and are hardy and drought tolerant.
You will find out what you love by just growing different things and in time you will decide for yourself what it is you love about a certain plant. Remember to design your beds well...........put the tall plants in the back and the short ones in the front. Don't plant too close together. That was always the hardest rule for me. Plants do grow and they spread out. There are some plants I love but they need dividing all the time and at my age I don't like doing all that work. I still grow some though but prefer plants that slowly grow into a bigger clump. I used to have a border of Stelle d Oro daylilies. I had 50 of them. Looked great till about the 3rd year when it was time to divide them. It would take my all day to lift 50 dayliles and hack them in half with a sharp knife. It about killed my hands. It was a lot of work. I was young then and did it but at my age now I just don't want to do that hard of work. I do still grow some but varieites that don't multiply so fast. Same for iris. I still grow some but don't like the work of dividing all the time. I like easy care plants. I find roses very easy to grow if you find the varieties that are disease resistant so you don't have to spray them all the time. I love the Knockout roses.
Good luck and happy gardening.
Brenda
I third the Victoria Blue salvia.
I really also appreciate all the responses! Hopefully I will be able to see pictures of everyones favorites as the seasons change!
Brenda,
First thing, thank very much for putting so much of your time into your post! Loaded w/ great ideas and information of which I will use all of it. I have a bunny problem, or at least I think I will. I see them all the time, especially at the base of the bird feeders at night and in the morning. These next few years I will be experimenting w/ everything. I cant use a lot of my yard for growing anything but grass b/c our drain field is underneath. We too love fruit and this year have 2 plum trees already waiting to be planted. And, as things progress, I will keep ya'll up to date. And, I can safely plant my asparagus tomorrow, right??? I year old crowns I bought at TSC...
Ella,
I hope I can see pictures of your roses and your "cottage garden scene". I am a very visual gardener.
Dorothian,
I would love to see all of those daylilies you have!! 650 varieties?!!?!?!? Do you charge admission? If you ever grow tired of any of the varieties, I'll take them :))
Kristi L,
Are the plants and flowers that you recommended high or low care? I think my favorite plant/bush is the butterfly bush. I have about 20 of them. Mostly for there smell, apperance and to attract hummers :)
Dori,
Tell me about this Night Scented Stock you speak of!?!?
Mary Ellen,
What is a super sweet 100 tomatoe? I love growing tom's but I cant stand to eat them :)
Kristopher
just a taste of what can happen with this gardening addiction you have acquired!! LOL
Kristopher, the first year that I moved to the country from the burbs, I bought a 6-pak of every kind of tomato that I could find. I had 86 tomato plants! We ate, froze & canned so many, but still we had tomatoes galore. I started asking my new neighbors if they could help me out and they kindly did. The super sweet 100 are wonderful little cherry type tomatoes that don't can or freeze too well, but they are delicious and produce like crazy. They're fun to pick and great for sharing! My 12 year old daughter still likes to pick them and take them to the neighbors. (By the way, I never did like tomatoes either until I got to eat them home grown. Now I LOVE them!)
Last year I only had 48 tomato plants. LOL Salsa anyone?
Mary Ellen
I luv tomato's and grow at least 40 kinds each year!
My granddaughter is a tomato freak!!!
Any way the government is offering a stimulus package for me to grow my garden??? ;)
Kristopher, my garden is a National Daylily Display Garden and anyone that wants to can come and look around. I know I am about 4 hours drive from Jenison, but if you are in the Thumb in July or August, just let me know and you are certainly welcome to come.
Kris,
They're relatively low maintenance--that is, I look after the soil by composting, weeding, and don't water all that much unless it's a really dry summer. Other than that it's just fall/spring cleanup and cutting back around this time of year. I leave many of them, like coneflowers to go to seed. The birds like the seeds in winter and new plants sprout. Coneflowers bloom after the first year they sprout.
Lucky you to have so many butterfly bushes! I get butterflies but, alas, no hummers. I used to put up feeders every year but finally gave up. Too urban an environment I guess.
Kris, you know some of my favorites , I sent them to you . Guess I just really like the "oldies, but goodies!!" Birdie
QUOTE: "With all do respect ma'am, lol, that was a lazy answer"
LOLOLOLOL!
Kris, my favorites are the herbs I grow, and the wildflowers I watch God grow.
Are you interested in trading Butterfly Bushes, if you have a lot? My dd's favorite plants!
I am going to try and make some more butterfly bushes from the ones I have. Otherwise, the ones I just got are all about 8 inches tall.
I have a bunch of wildflowers. My wife calls the tall, colorful weeds :)
Thanks Brenda! Thats going to really help!