I am assuming that the gardener's username is printed under the picture? I love all your colors..I have the tall pink garden phlox, the liatris, Mary Todd yellow daylilies and the coneflowers. Can you identify some of the other plants in the picture, especially the blue ones..do I see some globe amaranth in the picture too?

Beautiful gardens!

Thank you Pippi!

There are some Conca d' Or lilies (white and yellow) toward the center top of the picture. The blue flowers are Blue Butterfly delphinium. I love those - they're a true blue color and reseed all over the garden. I let them be wherever they land. The little round dark purple ones are drumstick allium, but globe amaranth would give a similar appearance. The purple echinacea are very old NOIDS.

How do you manage to keep your liatris blooming that beautiful color for a long time. Mine have faded away now and I'm ready to cut the plumes off. I read somewhere in a garden library book that if you cut the plume off liatris, make a trench, lay the plume in it and cover it with soil, that the seeds will make bloom next spring. I wonder if anybody has tried this?

The older my liatris get, the longer they bloom because the flower stalks are getting so much taller. Mine are fading now too and just yesterday I started to deadhead them. It wouldn't surprise me if you could lay the plumes in a trench and they'd grow, but not sure they'd bloom the next year. I deadhead mine because they reseed everywhere!

Do you cut yours down to the basal crown when you deadhead yours. I don't think I've had them to reseed for me but maybe I just haven't noticed. I still have a bag of seeds from last year's harvest. Do you think they are any good now. I'd love to start some perennial seeds this week to take to the Sept. 15th. plant swap but don't know if they will germinate and have enough growth on them to be presentable/desirable. I have some that I started last year that are good size, maybe I will pot them up and take them. They are blooming now so how would I manage that? I can repot them. Do I just cut off their plumes and repot them, put a marker in the pot?

I also have cherry brandy rudbeckia that I want to pot up and take. It is blooming now too, should I dig that up and transplant it now so it can get over transplant shock? Same way with burgundy gaillardia? The liatris was sent to me by a gardening friend in Indiana originally so I'll have to ask her which variety it is. Which coneflowers are those in your picture you posted? I have tall coneflowers and I bought 3 Pow Wow Berry coneflowers but are looking for Kim's knee high variety to replace the 4 ft. plus tall ones I have. I just cut them back last week because they had faded so bad and had been flattened back at the end of June in that bad storm. They never bounced back. I'm going to offer them to somebody but they have to come and get them. I won't have room for them in the car for the plant swap.

I just cut the blooms of my liatris but I'm sure it would be fine to cut down to the basal crown. When they first start to grow from self-seeding, they look like grass coming up. But if you pull them up you'll see little tiny bulbs on the ends. Your seeds from last year are probably still viable. Guess it depends on which seeds you'd like to start to take along to know if they'd be a decent size by Sept. 15th. Never hurts to try.

If you pot up your other plants now they should be good to go by then too.

The coneflowers in my picture are very old NOIDS...no idea where I even got them any more. They're about 30-36" tall.

I started some liatris from seed by winter sowing and they took 2 years to produce blooms.