Peonies: My peonies are breaking dormancy!, 2 by DonnaMack

DonnaMack wrote:
Oh, yes, my husband felt VERY vindicated. He also helped choose the tree next to it. A $35 paperbark maple they couldn't sell, so we for it for $17.50. It was about five feet tall. They are supposed to be slow growers (four inches a year) but Donna did her love you to death thing. The two plants liked similar things. Maple like to be acidified and watered (our soil was VERY alkaline) so I treated them both to Ironite and pine bark mulch and a soaker hose.

Poinget, you can grow cynoglossum from seed. That's what I did. There is also a pink variety that is less vigourous. Once you have these plants you have them forever. And they have sticky seeds, so that you, and any creature in your yard, will spread them around. Nepeta id easily divided. In fact, it seeds, so Nepeta Dawn to Dusk ended up all over my yard. In my old yard, it went with everything.

People say bad things about saponaria bouncing bett, but you just have to control it. I am actually seeing the pink variety (yes, it comes in white!) on the trails, and they are trying to get rid of it, so I may help myself. But look at the effects you can get with it, if you remember that plants in your yard are not in isolation.

One of my grass beds, to which I added tough red lilies (Red alert, a Longiflorum asiatic, and Hiawatha - highly recommended) and Campanula trachelium Bernice (unlike pltatycodons, tough) produced a stunning effect when I photographed them from beyond my peony bed.

Any investment in cynoglossum is worthwhile. It never goes away. And it went with everything in my color palette. And can you think of any other cheap bright blues? I'm germinating some now.