Garden advice needed

Hi PaL -- Lily of the Valley was my Grandma's favorite plant... they are gorgeous when they start to get all clumped up, I think. We had a yard full of them in a rental in Seattle years ago... people would come and dig up clumps, and they'd fill right back in. Good luck with yours! I don't know if they were damaged or not by not being planted deeply enough the first time. Are you seeing any life to them? It seems highly unlikely to me that they'll resent a little mistreatment at the beginning, especially when we've had these nice spring rains. You could probably buy a pot or two of them from either a nursery or farmer's market and plant those, too. That'll show those pips what they're supposed to do. The looser the ground is around them, the more likely they'll spread, since they spread from underground rhizomes.

Linda -- Good suggestion to get that Sunset book. Also, there are some fabulous plant databases online. Just start typing the names of the plants you're interested in. If you use their Latin names, you'll often get more detailed advice. Don't forget, you can get free advice from online catalogs as well as from columns and forums.

Even though I am saying so myself, I have put together some terrific potted mixes of flowers. If I were you, I'd look at what the best looking pots have planted in them in your area. No need to reinvent the wheel. Go to the fanciest nurseries and check out what they've got. Then try to find them cheaper in other places if need be. I go for small sized pots... which are best found early in the season. My best looking pots last year were huge pots of trailing begonias, started from corms. I crowded them a little and kept them fed & watered. They were gorgeous and didn't need any other plants with them since they flowered continuously and the foilage was beautiful.

Last year I also had some great luck with pots that had a mix of the newish trailing petunias (the ones that you don't have to pinch or groom). Mine were purple. As long as they stayed watered, they were fabulous and they trailed down two feet. (Sadly, there was a problem here when Mr.P decided to rip out the deck and put in brickwork and that project displaced the pots from their customary spot.)

Anyway, for the water problem, I think those little pellets that hold water worked well for the first week, but pots dry out so fast.... sigh!

Let's see, the petunias were mixed with some burgundy snapdragons that also had bronzed leaves, a bit of some fine-leafed Dusty Miller, some lime-colored sweet potato vine, and some lamium (the silver kind with the purple flowers is the kind I particularly like). The lamium, btw, is currently looking absolutely great 10 months later with only the little boxwood which had been put into the original pots for structure. I tend to crowd the pots full of plants and then sacrifice if I have to. The most important thing is to pick things you like and have a good variety of color and shape... but all having the same general water requirements. If you mix annuals with a small shrub or ornamental grass for structure and some perennials (like the lamium) those pots will look good for months. (In January, the lamium died back, so I cut out all the brown, almost to the soil level. It is now about six-eight inches long again and looking lush with just the box for company.) As for that -- I trimmed the box shrub lightly last fall, stuck all the trimmings in root-tone and then planted them in pots by my fountain where they get an almost continual light spray... I now have about 10 new plants. Yay!

The most fun with planting these is getting to decide on colors. I love to mix purple and orange and red -- but I live in Western Washington where sun is sometimes hard to find. Pinks and purples and white and blues all look good together. I have more trouble with yellows... though I planted yellow begonias this year. (I don't know why, it was red begonias that looked so good last year.)

Snapdragons are a real find for pots -- they can be well-behaved, they'll bloom, and then re-bloom and mine seemed to thrive on being cut back.
If you're really feeling patriotic or have a client who is, there is nothing like a good pot of red geraniums with some silver leafed Artemesia along with a good wash of trailing Lobelia, my preference being the darkest blue Lobelia you can find. Because the geraniums & lobelia won't bloom for a while, try to find an early red (like Nicotania) and an early blue (like a viola) if you need color immediately.




Hmmm, likely more than you may have wanted to know. I DO get carried away. Maybe I'll just head off to the plant store now. <grin>

Well, piffka and I pretty much agree.

I looked up tradescantia, its most common variety is known as wandering jew, a name I happen to shy from. But in any case I don't know the plant personally well. Seems to like the shade.

Piffka and I have the same take on looking at the most expensive and esoteric seeming nurseries. They will not be trying to just sell everything, I presume, but are zoned in on what makes it in your area or areas.
Not that all of those in the expensive category follow that.. but they often have smart staff and owners.

From my friend's experience, it is very hard to offer interesting plants in your own small place and compete with drugstore, etc., prices.
Buy your plant at the drug store or the home depot equivalent and it is conceivable you get a knowledgeable person, but mostly not. In my own area back in the mid nineties, the Home Depot offered many plants that wouldn't thrive in that exact microclimate. Sorry for not listing them.. my amazement at the time was at the plants they did have to sell and the logical ones they didn't. Take that then as an impression since I didn't take notes.

The markup at high end nurseries seems large, and now that I have seen the records from inside, I see their prices as often edging on too-low-given what-they-have-to pay-to-continue in business.
I see all these businesses trying to stay alive and no one appreciating them.

My now-business partner had a place that for years later people are still calling for her particular advice. She knows an immense amount about both design and how to make any teeny thing live. But she couldn't stay in business because there weren't enough people here interested enough to buy even the smallest thing. Not just the people like me really watching pennies, but people with some. People used to come into her nursery at lunchtime just to be in the space. And routinely not buy a thing.

And many days she didn't have a sale, especially in winter, though her decorations at the holidays were the best in town.

Well, she was new to the area, and shouldn't have started up here. We figure she would be ripping in dollars now if she'd opened in the Sonoma area. Oh, well.

I go on about this so people can make the jump to relate to who is selling you what. I have sympathy on both ends of things, but it is a crime of sorts to me when people of vast knowledge are shied away from because their very selectively chosen plants are priced at x percent more.
Even though they may seem high end or snotty, give them a break.. among other things, their plants mostly are alive in the pot, not grown at speed, and are healthy. These people may not be doing as well at all, at the end of the accounting day, as low end drug store nurseries, who get things by bulk, and the serious places, as I think of them, are mostly interested in plant material (as we call it) and how it does where.
And they may have degrees in the subject or at least a lot of experience.

A high end well regarded nursery has an eye out for plants that don't make it and culls them, if only for defensive reasons. I will never catch up with my business partner for what makes it locally here, as she had the nursery before we went into the design business together, when I was new in town. Her kind of local plant knowhow is very important. Again, please, don't dismiss at the best nurseries... and don't just ask there and buy elsewhere.

Please support your local people with knowledge, about most anything.

Hmmm, interesting take Ossobuco. I am in sympathy with good businesses that can't quite manage, despite the obvious taste of the owners. It is not the case here... this must be like Sonoma! The most expensive nurseries here are ridiculously prosperous... what can I say?
Here, for example, is my closest nursery, less than five minutes away. You would be AMAZED at the extent of their grounds, and the size of their prices. They have gorgeous stuff.
I shop there, but I watch my pennies (e.g. I buy the smallest pots and grow them up myself; I also take advantage of their sales.) I love the two for one sales that they do on shrubs. And I am just as willing to buy a plant from Safeway if I like its looks. In fact, last weekend I found a poor crushed pot of Forget-Me-Nots in the Safeway parking lot and took it home before it was completely dead. I was going to just compost it, because it must have fallen out of a car and been stepped on. Instead, I decided to give it some water... Dang if those flowers didn't perk up with some TLC... they're now thriving by the water spigot and have turned out to be a particularly deep blue. I am pleased.

I just think it is important to learn to recognize quality and to see what is available. Linda could go to the local Botanical Gardens and take some notes on their planters, too.

BTW, did anyone answer your question, Linda, about refreshing the soil? I say go ahead and reuse some of it, but refresh the top third with new really fertile soil. Lots of composted chicken manure would be my choice, though I have a horse so I never buy manure anymore.

Ice Plant, Agave, and other native plants will keep cats away, lower water bill, lower fire hazard, and are low maintance.


Here is a link to a comprehensive botanical site in SoCal: Quail Botnaical Gardens