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Produce => Non Edible Plants => Topic started by: aquilegia on September 30, 2005, 13:15:26
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Question's in the title - when does it look at its best and what plants contribute to this?
This year mine has looked it's best in Spring - from early spring with the daffs, wallflowers and primroses to late spring with all the (you've guessed it) aquilegias and geraniums.
Now it's looking a bit sad. The only things still flowering are the verbena bonariensis and rudbekia. All else has given up!
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To elongate your flowering period and to add to your Rudbekia why not grow some of the Crocosmia and Asters?
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Mont - yes have Crocosmia, but it finished a while back. Asters - hadn't thought of those...
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If I had to choose, I think it'd be May/June time, with the Wisteria and roses (sorry, Eric...), but I've tried to have something for all the seasons. At the minute, the Sedums are looking good, the grasses, asters, Verbena bonariensis and the Virginia Creeper is bright red. My worst month is late August, early September I think, mmm, will need to go for wander round now!!! ::) ;D Lottie
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Mine changes mood with the seasons and there's usually something going on. Flowering at the moment are assorted shrub and climbing roses, clematis Etoile Violette, Dr Ruppel and Beauty of Worcester, Japanese honeysuckle, rudbeckias, helianthus Lemon Queen, sedums, phlox, Japanese anemones, monkshood, some hardy geraniums, hostas, persicarias, penstemons, vebena bonariensis, physostegias, pinks, heathers, and a few mad forget-me-nots and an oriental poppy.
As for the rest, the foliage of the other geraniumms, the heucheras, hemerocallis, phlomis is looking good. The cornus alba sibirica is glowing red along with the amelanchier, parrotia persica and the euonymous. The flower/seed heads on the ornamental grasses are superb this year. Everything else is still green and I've just cut the lawn to set it all off.
It'll look completely different in a week or two when the leaves start to fall but then I'll have bare stems, conifers and other evergreens to keep me going till the bulbs start to pop up and loads of work lifting, dividing and planting before I hang up my tools for the winter.
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Ours looks best just before or just after we have had visitors to look at the garden.
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My looks best when it's dark. ;)
G xx
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;D
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I love my garden in the spring. The joy of seeing a bit of colour after a wild, wet and windy winter in North Wales is a joy beyond compare ;D Then next best is mid summer ...... June/July. Lovely colour and the baskets and tubs are glorious. I felt that the garden also needs some end of summer early autumn colour to cheer me up and keep away the winter blues, so did a bit of research and come up with the following additions:-
Crocosmia lucifer for a bit of hight
Japanese Anemones have about 5 different varieties and heights
Asters.....cant remember the variety but the blue is fantastic but a bit prone to mould..
The cosmos and nicotianas are still flowering and still gorgeous despite all the wind and rain over the past week.
Just need to sort out something other than heathers (ugh ugh) for a bit of winter colour. Any ideas out there ???
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I adore my garden for almost 11 months of the year. There is a brief spell, probably around May time, when all the spring bulbs have long gone and the Aquis and other early flowering plants have finished and there is a lull, but then BOOM, along comes everything else and I spend the rest of the year hacking back my jungle!
I love it at the moment as things are starting to fade, I am left with lots of wonderful grasses all in flower, and I leave those on for winter interest. My hardy fuschias look great, along with the hydrangea, which I also love in the depths of winter as the heads become all skeletal on the bare bush! I have a sprinkling of white cyclamen under the shrubs perennial sunflowers towering above the shrubs.
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My garden looks best when I've been away for a little while & I get back home!
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Awww, that's lovely. :D
G xx
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our lottie has got to look better now than it did lol ;D
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My looks best when it's dark. ;) mine is as good as anybodies when its snowed 6" deep :) :) :)
G xx
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I suppose its when all the early flowering perennials are at full tilt in June, that the garden looks the most full of colour, but when is it at ists best? Hmm.. I wonder sometimes if the early summer peak is too much colour.
I would like to say late summer as this is an aspect of the garden i am trying to develop, and i like the late summer flowers, but this time is usualy dry and the scruffy stony soil tends to let the late flowering plants down a bit, spoiling the effect.
I suppose the best time is in late spring when everythings fresh looking with new growth and promise of things to come. The foliage colours at that time are something special.
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Spting; I've got loads of bulbs out, and it's not so good later, apart from the Cyclamens. The weeds are usually under control then as well, though it was an awful mess this year as I hadn't been able to weed the flower beds for a couple of years due to thefts every time I did! I've still got a long way to go with that; what with illness it just hasn't been my year.
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my garden l think looks best in spring with all the bulbs ,love spring it like every thing comes alive and from spring to may when all the new shoots start to appear is my most exciting time , i do love my garden all year round ,but spring has a magical sense :) :) :)
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Mont - yes have Crocosmia, but it finished a while back. Asters - hadn't thought of those...
My asters are always very sad and look like they struggle. Ground rich, partially shaded but by next year might have totally gone :-[ Do they need special treatment?
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Hi
Like most mine is probably best in spring/early summer but for the first time it's actually looking not too bad now! I have a patch for hot colours and still have crocosmias, red hot pokers, dahlias and pots of yellow osteospermums together with two great late summer blue flowering shrubs - ceratostigma and caryopteris. Despite the latest wild winds it's still looking good and I'm really pleased! In the more 'pastelly' bit cosmos (real stars that just keep on going), nerines and sedums are giving the main show. Cutting the grass really helps too as I discovered yesterday after a two week hiatus!!
Cheers, Iain
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It may be the 3rd of October, But i have to say most of the garden is still looking good (not as good as late spring though), plenty of flower colour still. Makes it kind of hard to start changing and replanting things ready for next year!
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Mine looks great in early spring - Hellebores, snowdrops, early narcissus all over the place making you forget all about horrid, dark winter.
At the moment my Dahlias (Arabian Nights) and 7ft tall Verbena bonariensis are the highlights but I always have at least a few pots on the patio (seen from kitchen window) in full flower - Gentians, Cyclamen hed., Pelargoniums & Ceratostigma plumbaginoides are current stars. Happy dance ;D
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Mine looks best in Spring - suspect the original garden had been planted by builders who wanted to sell the house in Spring! - we kept one of the forsythias, the amelanchier, the prunus, one of the kerrias ... we also planted lots of crocus & daffodils, snowdrops, bluebells, leucojum, red & orange stemmed cornus.
The colour drops off a bit in late autumn after the amelanchier's leaves have fallen & the asters have faded & before the cornus' leaves have dropped & the winter heathers & jasmine come out. What flowers in November?!!
My asters are always very sad and look like they struggle. Ground rich, partially shaded but by next year might have totally gone :-[ Do they need special treatment?
Try moving them into full sun, Icyberjunkie - mine get sun nearly all day - don't think they like partial shade.
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ooo Forsythia.....I don't have one in this garden....must take cuttings from mums!
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What flowers in November?!!.
Last year I bought 2 Saxifraga fortunei at an RHS flower show. Not a plant I had come across before but such lovely little flowers. The bright pink one flowered its socks off Oct/Nov, the white one not quite so impressive. This year the pink one, Cherry Pie, is just coming into flower whilst the white one has got masses of buds but not started yet. I was so impressed with them last year that I went up to the RHS show on weds specifically to see what they had & came home with 2 more, both with pale pink flowers, one with bright green leaves & the other with fantastic deep purply leaves. So if you don't mind it small & have a shady spot, these will flower Oct?Nov
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Spring when everything is fresh and we've had some rain, then we get the arid desert look, now we get the carpet of leaves, then the wonderful explosion of autumn leaf colour, we get the bones in winter and if we're lucky a carpet of snow or frost.I guess from this my least favorite is summer and spring the best.
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Beejay - thanks for that idea, just looked up the white one (hate pink!) & it's really pretty. Unfortunately the details say lime-free soil & mine is alkaline but I'll put it on the list for when we move. And in looking it up, I found a page all about plants which are in flower in November, so thanks also for accidentally leading me to that! - I'll have to work through it & see if I can find anything else.
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i sort of love my garden most of the year -0 there is always something looking good. Right now, it is a bit of a trollope - all blowsy colours, too much lipstick and cleavage but falling about with no dignity whatsoever - a bit like me really. Loads of stuff flowering away in a last mad flourish - osteospermums, sphaeralcea, gaillardias, ursinias, arctotis (I have a gravel garden with a kind of African daisy theme - great for long flowering drought resistant planting). Spring always looks lovely but there is a bit of a dreary time round about the end of May after all the tulips have finished, before the roses really get going. In truth, I am trying to get away from the traditional herbaceous border thing but am not keen on the currently fashionable 'prairie' planting. I like one or two grasses but some friends of mine have a grass border which I think is unutterably dull. My favourite family is the compositae with mallows (alcea, callirhoes, sidalcea etc. coming close). Late summer looks fabulous with the low golden autumn sun glowing through the stipa and arctotis, heleniums and rudbeckias, heliopsis, asters and osteospermums - and the escholzia always have a second wind with cornflowers and calendula. Mostly, I love the thought of a winter rest and tend to leave the garden to be rampant and wanton with a touch of the faded actress about it.
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Have you tried irises and scabious to get you through May? They would do well in your dry gravelly stuff. The rest sounds luscious.
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My garden looked best by accident this year. There was a scrappy old bed in full sun that housed a flag iris (I think - purple) and I just shook calendular,californian poppies, poached egg plant and poppy seeds on and it all happened at the right time along witha lovely dark stripey wallflower. Not planned but the colours were really spicey and smelled fab.