Nan, I would have never thought to put a geranium directly in the ground. I love it!!!! I also like your white coneflower. Might make a good substitute for Shasta daisy, which is not reliably perennial here.
Laura, I take exception to your statement that "it's not pretty" cuz it IS pretty. I love the hot orange coneflower and (what I think is maybe?) bee balm especially. I have been tempted to try both in my long border, but have hesitated. Coneflowers can get so big, and the foliage tends to look pretty ratty here by late summer. Bee balm, I've heard, spreads a lot if you let it. My space is limited.
Jill, your daylilies are beautiful, and I love the cultivar combinations. That is something I'm still trying to work out by trial and error. So far, it's mostly error!!! I decide on paper what should work well together for color, bloom season, height, etc. Then, they do not perform as expected, and it takes three years or so to know that beyond a shadow of a doubt!
I try to treat my raised beds like containers, but limited to thrillers and fillers. The goal has been to have plants that alternate being one or the other, depending on the season. I'm getting there slowly, but there are always setbacks. I had to divide iris last year, and that little chore set back everything. I also took some of the spring bulbs out while I was at it, and I maybe got a little carried away in one of the beds. Didn't do enough in the other. Here's a couple looks at the spring layers.
And here it is more recently
Because there is so much crammed in these beds, I have given up on trying to plant any other perennials or annuals to extend the bloom season. I'm going to be content just to let it be a foliage garden after daylily season. I do like the red castor beans planted behind these beds, though. They are growing between them this year only because they volunteered to be there, and I'm letting them alone because there is a pretty nice pumpkin vine with them!
