Viewing comments posted by Jenn

5 found:

[ Showy Verbena (Verbena bipinnatifida) | Posted on December 4, 2011 ]

Prairie verbena grows wild in my area (North Texas). I've never planted it, as it grows just fine on the prairie without any help from me. I have a lot of black clay in the soil, and lots of sun and wind. Verbena does just fine with all of that. It's one of the lower growing plants on the prairie, maybe 6-8 inches tall with a clumping habit. Verbena is usually one of the first wildflowers to show up in the spring, and one of the last to leave. I can't speak for other areas where it grows, but around here, it doesn't have a terribly pleasant smell, rather like wet horse! But it's nature's way of telling us that spring is coming, so wild verbena is a welcome sight around here.

[ Russian Sage (Salvia yangii) | Posted on December 3, 2011 ]

Easy to establish. Drought tolerant sun lover. They give off a nice fragrance and attract pollinators. They grow quite tall, and will spread out, so give them room in the back of the bed!

[ Wood Sage (Salvia nemorosa 'Schneehugel') | Posted on December 2, 2011 ]

Salvia plants are a favorite of mine because they are both beautiful and garden workhorses. I have them planted in the garden bed that I fondly call The Front Walk of Burning Death. It's a west-facing garden bed where the blazing afternoon sun likes to burn most plants to a crisp, and the prairie winds finish off anything that the sun might have left alive. It took a lot of trial and error to find plants that can take this kind of abuse. Salvia wins hands down.
It doesn't mind the sun, the heat, the wind, the drought conditions, or the black gumbo clay in the soil. They continually reflush after I clip off the spent flower spikes, blooming throughout the summer, only giving up in the fall when cold temperatures arrive. What's more, they attract bees to your garden. For the first time after I planted the bed in with salvia, I had a bunch of native carpenter bees coming to visit regularly! These pollinators do so much good for garden beds. Salvia does such a grand job of attracting them that I now have plans to include them in a few backyard beds where most of my annual vegetables are grown.
Interplant this pretty white variety with some of the other color options available for a pretty show!

[ Toad Lily (Tricyrtis hirta 'Blue Wonder') | Posted on November 30, 2011 ]

I planted some of these pretty plants when I lived in Connecticut, and had a lot of deeply shady spots around the house. It could just have been my luck, or the sad state that the plants arrived in (large online supplier), but I found these to be a little temperamental. They needed very rich, well draining soil, and I couldn't let the soil dry out on them. I even had to stake the poor things while they were getting established, but, again, they arrived from the seller in a sad state. True to their description, they do very well in the shade, establishing nicely in a spot where I couldn't get much else to grow for lack of direct sun. Their flowers, much smaller than the Oriental lilies we're accustomed to, came in early fall, and were shockingly pretty. I wouldn't dare to grow them now that I live in dry, sunny Texas, but I certainly thought them worth the trouble in New England.

[ Moonflower (Ipomoea alba) | Posted on November 29, 2011 ]

I love planting these together with morning glory. I plant them both in large rectangular planters, and let them climb up two trellises that I have mounted to the brick facing of the house. They look so beautiful! I find that though they're not terribly xeric, they can take a lot of heat, and are prolific growers. Both moonflowers and morning glory are annuals in my part of the world (North Texas), but they often reseed themselves, and sprout back up in the spring. They actually reseed a little too well. I'm often pulling stray shoots out from parts of the garden where they're not meant to be! A little extra weeding is well worth having these beauties in your garden.

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