How close do you space your plants?

music2keep - I agree, cram annuals, and space perennials! Those perennials keep getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger....................... Yaaaaaaaaaaay!!

Early_Bloomer - your Cleome is beeeeeee-a-u-tiful! And those things cram themselves lol the self-seeding is one of my fav things about 'em!
I got told you couldn't grow them in calgary, so I'm trying to prove that wrong! I planted 6 of them the other day - seem to be doing well. I used to grow 'em in Winnipeg, and they self-seeded like weeds and the funniest thing was the way they drooped a bit, and tickled your neck or tap you on the shoulder if you sat too close. LOL startled some of my coffee friends who sat out in the garden with me :-)

I knew a guy that claimed he was an extrovert with an inferior attitude. Putting a twist on that; I'm a crammer with a spacer attitude. I'd love to cram them together for gratification this year. Another plus would be the extra room it would allow for more varieties and color. I'm relatively new to flower bed gardening so when the directions say space x" apart thats what I do. We started three new gardens this year. I use mulch because I'm too lazy to weed. LOL As I walk around the gardens I think they look barren (and pathetic). Then I remember eight years ago when we drilled a new well. Judy was into ornamental grass at the time so we put six plants, three varieties, in the dirt surrounding the well head to hide it from passersby. I thought it looked barren. The well head stood out like a sore thumb. Now, if we have a pump problem I hope it's between February and April, otherwise a machete will be necessary to get to the well head. I figure the new gardens will fill out in three to five years. I'm not planning on going anywhere. I'll wait.

Thanks for your time.
Gary

I voted for leaving space. Ha! I'm sitting at my computer looking down at the garden. It's crammed. This year everything in my area , despite the terrible soil, seems to be lush and overgrown. My worst problem is that I have bulbs that are completely overgrown by the daylilies in front of them. I mean, I expect the daylilies and peonies to cover up the withering foliage, but not the flowers! I discovered a mess of either meadow squills of camassia quamash under a burgeoning peony.
I'm becoming a fan of tiarella cordifolia--it spreads, it's low, it flowers, and then it spreads some more. The weeds have less of a chance once it gets going.

See Grumble, Nobody even has a comment about what we are saying because we are so far from their reality.

I too know what the other world is like since I lived in the Cleveland area for the first 11 years of my life and still have family back east. they don't own any watering system other than a hose and seldom need use of it but to hose off the car or the side of the house.

You get a lot more of the Monsoon rains than we get, I look with envy to the east and see your lightning and the black sky with the white streaks of rain in August and Sept. and want to chase it just to drive around in it. sigh.

I love spreading stuff and climbing stuff, they cover over a lot of negative things .

For Helen and Grumble,
I wintered in Tucson way back in 89/90 and left there in early Feb going to San Diego, up the coast to Solvang, then back through Barstow to Vegas before coming home. Out there when someone tells you about an interesting rock garden they are talking about the rocks, not the plants among the rocks.

I'll never forget the morning I awakened and saw two inches of snow on the saguero outside my window. The snow was gone by 8 but it is still a pleasant memory.

Gary

Gary it is gorgeous in Tucson compared to the High desert where we live or Solvang.

Funny about the rock gardens, it is true. Most people give up collecting dead plants and collect dead cars as yard ornaments if you drive around outside the cities in the high desert. :(

I am a crammer. We revamped our gardens in the back a couple of years ago from shade plants to sun because we had to cut down a very old tree that supplied a lot of shade. Here is the butterfly garden;so named for a butterfly bush that is in there somewhere. LOL

This message was edited Jun 6, 2008 5:07 PM

Tiny townhouse yard + large appetite for plants + low impulse control at nurseries = another hardcore crammer here ;-)

When we moved here late last summer there wasn’t anything planted at all, so this is only the garden’s first spring…yikes, what have I done? LOL

Yep - You are a crammer! LOL!
BTW - I love your frog and turtles!



This message was edited Jun 6, 2008 7:19 PM

Sunny, that's a sweet little garden!

Oh Sunny....... that's so beautiful! Looks like the kind of garden where you sit out with your coffee in the am, to admire the view, and forget to come back in until it's suppertime!!!

I space them out, if they're perennials and I crammed them in, if they're annuals.

Northern I do the same without hesitation.

Well it was a valiant competition: Spacer vs. cCammers with Crammers going down big time ALTHOUGH perhaps some Crammers forgot to vote? LOL I'm grasping at straws^_^ Just wanted to say again that this is been a fun poll and I've luved the chat before it ends.

I like the Tropical Look, so I vote for cramming!!!!

i started out trying to space them, but...... heh,heh, got a little more crowded as the years went by.
the last of the daffs and the start of the tulips

Depends on where & what I'm planting.

sunnyg,did you do the pond? love it. sally

I am so happy to hear there are a multitude of crammers out there - I dont call myself a crammer - I just tell people I dont like to see any dirt! Problem is in the spring I can see lots of dirt so I try to fill it all in and then of course they all start to grow so - I am a crammer and I am not ashamed to admit it. Do we need a crammers annonymous?

hahahaha I thought that's what DG was for, cuz we all love plants, so naturally we want to see More, and More, and More - definition of crammers, doncha agree?

Susan

I voted for spacing, cuz I don't know all the plants that will survive in Calgary, and I'm trying to grow perennials.........
I'm re-educating myself to a whole new micro-climate in my yard (a term we never used in Winnipeg!), and to the fact I dare not plant during the Victoria Day w/e.
3 full days of planting is something that's such a ingrained tradition, but I'm moving on........
I've got garden/yard/tree area that had been abused and neglected for so long that I had to prune, and this year it's paying off :-)

My, but my perennials are taking a long time this year to fill out........ I seem about 1 month behind all my other neighbours, and They're 1 month behind because of the rain....... and snow............. BUT my lilacs will bloom, and my irises will Not rot.......I hope.
I keep thinking to the future when my garden will be crammed all by itself, but it's "turrible hard" to wait........

I agree this has been a fun topic with a lot of teasing and everyone had a lot of crap to dole out, and a lot of opinions on the matter.

My take is that we all cram at one time or another, even if we shouldn't.

I am definitely in the cramming group, too little land to grow so many interesting plants. The only outlet I have for expansion at the moment is a school garden at my job that I started last year, and am expanding this year down the adjacent slope. I moved some of the more aggressive spreaders/ and or larger growing plants from the old school garden to the new one, and also have done the same with some plants in my home gardens. Its got poor soil with plenty of gravel and construction leftovers from years ago, but it does have two things in short supply in my gardens at home, lots of sun and no tree roots. One good thing about cramming is that it makes it a lot harder for the weeds to get a hold once the plants grow in, especially if one gets to them early before the canopy closes in. Micromanaging is also sometimes needed to make sure that a particularly choice plant doesn't get overwhelmed by its neighbors.
Some of the plants I grow self sow with abandon, like Lychnis coronaria, Silene armeria, Nicotiana sylvestris, Verbena bonairensis, and some South African species I am growing (a nemesia sp, Senecio inaequidens, and Ursinia nana) among others. They need regular thinning as they develop to get nicer flowering plants.
I abhor straight rows and formal plantings, love the "cottage" look with lots of variety to keep it interesting.
Ernie

Baby plants look so lonely all spaced apart. I always think they need company till they get big enough to spread out on their own. Cramming?....how about nesting :-)

helnzn11 commented "You get a lot more of the Monsoon rains than we get, I look with envy to the east and see your lightning and the black sky with the white streaks of rain in August and Sept. and want to chase it just to drive around in it. sigh."

I haven't been through the monsoon season yet. Just bought my place last November. I have seen photos of the 1938 flood of the usually dry river bed Mojave River and the concrete block water diversion wall on the uphill side of my place clearly indicates that there has been "some" problem when the pair of uphill streets both funnel storm water through my place during monsoon season.

That's pretty much the way the desert is though: super hot over 100 degree ultra dry days with nights that can be chilly; not a percent of humidity most of the year then monsoons during the short rainy season. One delight though is that the word "snow" enters conversations locally as rarities equivalent to the Mojave River having any above ground water running through it and the whole town turning out to stand along the banks to see it.

I try to space perennials in the recommended spacing, but put the annuals I grow from seed very closely together, often between the perennials, to get a full look.

Donnna

I always tended to space things out (too much so) but have reached the point where I'm cramming things in. Not sure if I've changed or just my garden has.

Last year I crammed in too much in our little space; the tomatoes got all tangled up with each other and a plague of downy mildew swept through the squash-jungle. This year I was going to apply my lessons and space things out.

And I tried. I really tried!

There are now three small patches of ground in the veggie bed where I can step to reach the plants in the middle. I'm not sure how long those patches are going to stay bare.

There are tiny glimpses of ground in the strawberry bed and some bare patches left in the herb bed. The plants and I are both working to fill those.

Anitra--What a beautiful little garden. Very quaint.

We will see come end of Summer Grumble.

I'm such a crammer. I'd rather have more waves of blooms than wide swaths of pine bark mulch. I overseed, too. Let competition under local conditions thin the herd!

I have a personal vendetta against thistles. Tall, thick plantings seems to deter even the "gifts" our abundant goldfinches leave behind while stealing my cosmos and echinacea seeds. Adorable little bandits!

lol, yeppers, I'm a crammer! just got home from vacation and my garden grew another foot taller!

I was at a nursery website and it had this quote that stated (I don't remember word for word). "The biggest mistake we find that new gardeners make is planting a variety of flowers and not groupings of 3." Like I said not an exact quote but that is the jist of it. I was like oops there goes my garden. They would dig it up and start over! I was just wondering what you all thought of this.
I hope I am not hijacking this thread. Let me know about that too. LOL

Buckimom I don't think there are any rules for good cramming practices other than the Creed ^_^ After if you like it it's perfect.

Well DRIFTS of certain plants do make impressive sights but for those of us that want some of EVERYTHING.... well... its hard enough finding room for ONE yet alone 3 of something!

If you're supposed to plant everything in threes, then why do all the catalogs sell their pre-planned gardens that have one or two of everything? I have to confess to ordering a couple of those to get started, with the hopes that I could figure out how to save seed or divide clumps to eventually get multiples of each. Boy, do the echinacea re-seed themselves! LOL

I think it all depends on what you are looking for in a garden, and what you are planting. Lilies do give a better color splash if grouped in threes, also some taller more spindly flowers look better in multiples.... but why plant 3 MG vines if 1 will fill out perfectly and be more managable. And I cant imagine 3 CA poppies in the same clump, it would take up most of my garden! lol! One single Gald would look funny all by herself! lol!

I tend to just toss seeds and see what comes up :o)

i'd put a lot more in if i had them .by the time my ele ears get bigger, it'll fill out more. sally