Perennials: Flopped Over Cranesbill, 1 by gregr18

gregr18 wrote:
If it is Johnson's Blue, Karen, that is not always going to be the neatest plant. It kind of creeps around a little like a ground cover sometimes. The nice thing about it, though, is that it is very tough, and if you're new to geraniums, you'll have a tough time killing it.

Tabasco, I agree that it can be tough to squeeze performance out of a lot of the geraniums. For now, I've started concentrating on G. cinereums and growing them in full sun like rock garden plants. I can consistently get these plants completely covered in blooms. They are definitely in the clumpy category, so I use them as edgers and specimens. I don't use them much as accents to perennials (aside from wild G. pratense that grow and do well whether I put them there or not) because I'm more of a specimen gardener than anything else, but I've heard a lot of people have the same problems that you are. In think it is in general an easy genus of plants, but it can be an extremely challenging genus to grow well!

Karen, if you decide you like geraniums, you'll eventually run into these, the G. cinereums that I have been writing about. These might be getting a bit away from what you'd like from a geranium, but they are blooming machines. Like Tabasco said, these especially need drainage, drainage, drainage, but they're worth it if you have places with kind of sandy but still quite fertile soil. The plant in the picture I am posting is now covered in those blooms. Right now, it looks more like this: http://users.belgacom.net/monic/flow42.jpg