For all you landscapers...I need some suggestions.

Eh, I'm fine with the word 'yard'. And bin placement is part of design.. sometimes. I'm as interested in tiny yard low money design as I am in any kind of estate design. Usually more so.

I just thought that "As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden" doesn't work with "yard".

Meantime, I'm running into scads of websites on ornamental grasses, and native grasses, and grasses for different states. All relatively new as these things go. This is good, "my work is done".

A garden implies some human action to put it in some kind of order. A yard may just be baked soil cracking in the sun. But, hey, one plant, or one mind, can make it a garden if only in fantasy. And the fanciest Sissinghurst space is a yard at base, to me.

I love the Oak Leaf Hydrangeas...but they are some kind of ugly during the winter. Maybe just a few...I need to see how they do in shade. I grew up with Lantana in Mobile, AL. They were not too bad and I guess my brother and I had sense enough not to eat the little berries.

I will say one of the twins consumed the Mondo grass berries when they were 2 - had to call poison control. That was at the house we lived in last time. I do believe they are old enough not to do that now.

I am enjoying this so much. Thank you!

I want something pretty to look at but easy to keep. We are so busy with the kids right now that I don't want something high maintenance - as they get older we may change -

I love gardening and generally have a vegetable/herb garden every summer for me and the kids to work in. But our yard is so big - I just want something that makes me happy to drive up to but is not so high maintenance it ties up all our time.

Well, you know what I think already, consult with a local expert. Taking out the wrong plants is worse than dealing with not good grass.

I think your suggestion is great Osso...will do so. I love all of your suggestions. I think I am going to go to the library Tues and see if I can find a book about landscaping in this area, like what you were talking about there in Albuquerque. We have the Southern Living headquarters near here, in Birmingham - so I can't imagine that there is not something out there like that...Thanks Osso

littlek, you're not being a pest. I very much appreciate your knowledge of gardening.

yeah, lantana is considered a pest, a weed. So is vinca. My lantana's may spread far as an individual plant. A couple of years ago I had one grow to at least a 6 foot circum. Now I stick to ones that only grow a couple feet out.

Weed or not, they are pretty and can be left to their own devices.

Osso, I have a carex memory for you....

My neighbor has that for a front lawn, no maintenace. Very pretty, bends in waves when a breeze blows.

One day I was sitting on the ground on my patio, bent to some task or another. I heard "something" behind me, so I turned 3/4's of the way around to see what it was...

This darling corgi was bounding toward me, through the grass, he had to make these tremendous corgi leaps to get over the mounds of grass. Once he got to my patio, he became quite dignified, coming over to say hello quite politely.

Good! I'm all for you're going easy (just smart) and given you really like having a garden and so on, you'll start to nose around over the next several years figuring out what you like and don't.

When my husband and I fixed up our house in the early nineties, we had been thinking it out for quite a while. Years. Well, he had to put up with me in design school.. hah, I started out with a pool going into the house, ala frank lloyd wright. Snort. We took it lackadaisaically, mostly due to low money, but it worked out well as by the time we did the remod it was quite simple to draw and spec, with no disagreements. (I drew, he reacted, I went back to the drawing board, back and forth, back and forth, we both ended up happy with the ideas that worked out from that, which we'd not have thought of in the first place.)

I love Lantana Chai - always have. Love all the little flowers that make up one big flower.

The wormwood is interesting...I don't think I have ever seen it before.

Oh, ****, you're going to make me cry...

love that story.

Artemisia (wormwood) grows here in sandland and in LA... I'm learning, if it grows in Tejas and Alabama..

ah, I just googled roman wormwood.. I may have to get me some of that..

Oh wait, it's an invasive one.

The ones I know are 'californica' and 'powis castle' and 'pycnocephala' (sandhill sage). Oh, and 'stellerana' (beach wormwood, dusty miller) and 'tridentata' (big sagebrush). Maybe 'ludoviciana' (silver king artemisia).
They all seem southwestern to me, which they are, mostly, but powis castle is an offshoot of the european common wormwood.

I am not a big fan of Dusty Miller - we have it around here...but it's so - white. I like green with a little color. So Dusty Miller is a type of Wormwood? That's interesting.

yeah, I'm the same way about Dusty Miller. It's good as an accent to emphasize the color of something else, but that's about it. I haven't had any luck with it.

I didn't know that about it being a wormwood either.

The wormwood the neighborhood guy has is Powis Castle. It's a bleached green, not as light as dusty miller. More like green with a silver cast.

don't know from wormwood, but all wood is kinda scarce here...

anybody played with mandevilla?

(I was overcome and am now trying to cultivate it out of territory...)
<I do a lot of out of territory>








Spendi, if you can't speak to the plants, how are you to understand the animals?

I had trouble with mandevilla back in Venice. Might have been my own fault.. but I remember others having trouble with them too - might be different where you are.

Wait, I'll see what Sunset says -

"They survive outdoors only in the mildest regions. In colder areas, treat as annuals or grow in containers and move them indoors or to a greenhouse for the winter.. Need heat to bloom.. Watch for spider mites.."

where I live, everything cool must be dug up and wintered in the grow room...

(elephant ears won't live here all year either)

now back to mismi's dilemma...

I understand both. You justify singling some out for your aesthetic delectation.
It's as if you are trying to parade a superior taste and a more refined knowledge of horticulture.

Looks like a mirror to me. Some sort of exercise in control and invidious competitiveness. Plants as badges of honour. Nature as a stage-set.

The limit set by income.