Love mine too. Apparently, beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.
What are your THREE least favorite perennials?
It is not really my least favorite, but when I first started gardening at this house I purchased a variegated artemesia which was patented and I thought very attractive. It spreads very well. I don't mind pulling it from my sandysoil. But I laugh because I bekieve I paid money for a patented weed! LOL
Haha....hostages.
I love physostegia!! We have a large clump under our dawn redwood and then I got some more clumps this year from someone my wife works with. I plant them in part to full shade. I don't mind the 'boring' green because I have so many other plants around it that it doesn't matter. I also like the way it spreads. The only thing I don't like is that the stems aren't usually strong enough to hold the blooms upright and they start to flop a little.
Oh wow....I didn't realize theobedient plant did well in shade.....I just got/planted some this month and might be moving them next spring! Thanks for the info
Some of mine is in shade with tree roots It is short, erect, and blooming later, which is fine.
Yeah Val, it does great there. It's nice to have a late summer bloomer for shade and it's so pretty.
Well, too much of anything is maybe a bad thing... and if *all* my hostas were variegated, it would be a confusing visual mess. There's a place for most things, in my palette. I'm afraid I'd be a little embarrassed to have some of you guys stop by! But ... my hostas are set off by interesting ligularias, pulmonaria, microbiota, rhododendron, heuchera, primroses, astilbe, vinca, ginger, hepatica, epimedium, tiarella; and without larger leaves to set them off, all those small-leaved things would form an undifferentiated mass. And daylilies serve a purpose. I have to admit, I don't have any of the "common" ones. I leave the Usual to my neighbors, and have been replacing some lesser performers with some of the new, high bud count and/or repeat bloomers.
Least favorite: great blue lobelia, Lobelia siphilitica. Seeds itself everywhere, sneakily - you can't deadhead your way out of this. (It really does belong in a woodland/wild garden setting, where it should be a fantastic performer. But not in a shared space.) And the little creeps set deep and extensive root systems before you know it. Next least favorite: campanula "Cherry Bells." Ugly color, and ditto on the seedling-scattering; it's just as bad as shasta daisies such as "Alaska" that escape into your lawn. Also no longer appealing because it doesn't stay where it's planted is ostrich fern, matteucia struthiopteris. Fortunately you *can* dig it up. It just never ever really goes away.
I reserve the category of truly hateful for things that are impossible to control, even when appropriately planted. I can control bishop's weed, even. It's in an entirely confined space where its vigor is necessary, and is its great virtue. But real thugs... sigh.
Interesting. A plant popped up in my front out of nowhere. I put it on this forum and it was identified as Lobelia siphilitica. I deadheaded it, but now I'm thinking I should go and pull it out.
But my yard is weird. I have s single lamium galeobdolon - yellow archangel. I had to get it id'd because it was there when I got there. I have had ONE - for years! The picture is from 2012, and I remember seeing it before that.
Hey Donna. Well. You could just keep an eye on the lobelia. The thing is, it seems like by the time each blue stalk finishes blooming all the way up to the top (and the flowers *are* gorgeous), the seeds have already been produced and dispersed from the first-opened flowers. I didn't know this when I brought my guy home. Oops.
If you see a bunch more babies, maybe you will want to get after them. The seeds are so very fine - smaller even than snapdragon seeds - and if this plant is successful from seed in your area, you're going to have a big seed bank maybe for a long time.
On the other hand, how this plant behaves in your garden may be different than mine. Our zones, 3 and 5, aren't very far apart, but maybe soil types are more different, so - it depends.
I got the lobelia because I loved the blue, and it comes at a time of year when there isn't much perennial blue available for our northern gardens. But I'm now substituting a taller catmint for it (Souvenir d'Andre Chaudron, which seems bluer to me than many shorter types), and some annuals, where I need a cooler color. Catmint spreads a lot underground, to be sure, but at least I can find it and dig it out.
Yes, yes, Souvenir. Glorious plant. Great choice. And yes, it is definitely bluer. Just protect it over the winter, since it is a bit more tender than some of the other nepetas. It needs a bit more water too. It will not spread the way some of the others too.
Thank you for reminding me. As you can see, I was a big fan of it in my former garden. I had some here, but my neighbor's moron tree cutters killed my clumps. I meant to buy more, and now you have reminded me. Thank you!
I do not like lily of the valley it is very invasive ,do not mind keeping it in a container .I gave lots of plants to my friend since her yard slopes down to a creek she enjoy them growing in that area.
I beat back tons of it. It isn't as bad as violets, but every spring I start tearing out more. I have really been concentrating on the violets. Of violets, creeping charlie and lily of the valley, the violets are the worst because they can destroy other plants.
People sell lily of the valley for a nice bit of change. I am thinking of containerizing it, since the scent is actually quite nice, and the berries are pretty. I gave away a bunch too.
I have a joke about violets.When I first started gardening my kids were small and I did not have lots of funds to spend on plants and one day I was these lovely purple flowers growing on the roadside and I uprooted one and planted it in my yard . It began such a menace that's I began pulling them up , they were in every container and between every rock . I swear never again to do that with a plant I do not know.lol Now when I see plants I like I make sure I do research on it before planting it in my yard.
Oh, I know. When I first moved here I thought they were lovely, so I dug up some clumps and put them under a pear tree. Happily the tree was a Bradford Pear and began to split so it went, and many of the violets with it. We didn't have them in my previous community because it was former farmland. There were no violets, lily of the valley, creeping charlie and very few hostas. And the only strawberries I had were the clumping, beautiful, edible fragaria vesca reugen, which I grew from seed, not the awful red and yellow ones that pop up here. No silver or Norway maples, no walnut trees. By the time big parts of Lake County were being developed in the 90's people knew the deficiencies of those trees. They were actually hard to find..
The two communities are only 30 miles apart. Like night and day. Amazing.