Doper gardeners, please enter and give me your sage advice......

In My Humble Opinion
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Thanks in advance. :slight_smile:

Ok, I moved into my house just over a year ago. Last summer I planted some marigolds in what I intend to always be my annual bed. Here’s a photo of it from this year where I planted pansies (ftr, those suckers are hardy). Oddly, a few marigolds sprouted up, they must have seeded from last year, but I digress. The only problem with this bed is that the back portion doesn’t get any sun and the flowers die. I’m thinking next year I’ll just not plant in that section. Opinions?

There were some plants that looked to be mums in the bed when I planted the marigolds, and I didn’t mess with them. But they did not come up. The question on this one is, when mum season comes, do I just dig around the pansies and place them? And then would I just plant annuals around them in the spring?

My main flower bed is intended to be a wild, untamed, mostly perennial bed. It started out with big, gorgeous hostas and a sizeable peony bush. Last year I put in some shasta daisies that my friend gave me from her garden, and this year I put in some daffodils and tulips. Then after they died I put a few gerbera daisies in the front, which btw, are not hardy at all.

The problem with this bed is that the back half that falls under the awning doesn’t get any sun at all. A few weeks ago I planted these partial shade bushes in the back, hoping they would blossom. But they seem to be dying and I’m not sure why. Do you think that they might just look like that this year and come back with a flourish next year? I am hoping that is what will happen. What are some other plants that would do well in shade? I prefer perennials for this part of the garden.

The other little pickle is this area right here:

Earlier in the summer I put some bulbs in there and nothing but weeds came up. So I decided to get these perennial lilies to plant there. It is full sun in that area, but the dirt doesn’t seem as hospitable as in my other gardens. I planted these lilies with loamy soil, hoping that would make the soil richer and make these plants flourish.

But now looking at that site, I feel like it needs a few more plants to fill it out. Do you think these lilies will be reliable to come back next year? And, if you have suggestions as to what to plant with them, I would be much obliged.

Ok, that’s my situation, any and all advice would be appreciated. Oh, and I also tried climbing roses. Basically the predicament is that they aren’t growing well and certainly aren’t flowering. Here’s a pic I just took:

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I’ve lived a shady life for many years. Your best friend is Impatiens. They’re bright, last all season, bloom like a maniac, and prefer shade to sun (though sun won’t hurt them as long as you keep them watered). Seriously. It’s not too late to put them in now. They’ll flower until the frost takes 'em out. Good luck!

Re: the lillies…I had mine in tiny nursery pots and a tree fell on them over the winter. They came back with triple the blooms this year! Freekin’ gorgeous but short-lived. I adore them while they’re there.

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Are impatiens perennial? Hell, even if they are annual I could use that in the back part of my annuals bed. I don’t feel like it looks filled out enough.

I really also want suggestions on what kind of flowering bushes work well and take on a life of their own. I see these plants in other people’s yards. Is it possible to get a cutting from someone else’s bush and grow it in my own yard? I know that’s how I got my shasta daisies, but I’m not sure how many other plants do that.

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Well, no…they’re not. I missed the part where that was a prerequisite. Sorry! But they will fill it in beautifully. You could plant them in clumps of 8 or 10 plants for little bursts of color, or you could just plant them across the whole back of that bed.

Flowering shrubs…I can’t help you there. I really love them but I don’t think I have a single suitable spot for them. They like sun.

Here’s some wiegalas. http://images.google.com/images?q=weigela

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Impatiens are shady annuals. You might also try some nicotiana (flowering tobacco) - I would put a large annual at the back of this bed. Along with pansies, you could consider adding some foliage annuals as well to fill in, like coleus. Heck, they’re just annuals - experiment until you find stuff you like!

I don’t really understand this question - you have mums, but they didn’t grow this year? I don’t think you have mums any more.

The back of this bed looks like a sun and rain shade area - too dry, too shady. The shrubs might just be taking awhile to establish; the saying for shrubs is first year they sleep, second year they creep, and third year they leap. If they’re not actually dying, they might just be establishing their root systems. Most shrubs are sun-lovers, though; there are few shade-loving shrubs. I would consider putting massive dry shade-loving perennials back there rather than a shrub; maybe goatsbeard or bleeding hearts.

I personally don’t care for bulbs much; I haven’t had any luck with them. Anyway, are those asiatic lilies there? They should absolutely thrive in that patch if they are. Asiatic lilies are hardy, sun-loving and drought-tolerant (I have three varieties in my front yard - I should get a picture of my most recent addition, a Brazilia cultivar).

I would plant some rounder, mounded types of sun-lovers around them - silver-mound artemisia comes to mind (which, technically, is a sage! :smiley: ), or soapwort, or lady’s mantle. If you’ve amended the soil in the bed), I would suggest a good mulch to keep the moisture in now. Tall perennials like these lilies would normally go towards the back of the bed, but you can put them in the middle and work downwards heightwise from them all around, too. Daylilies would love htis patch, too, and fill up a lot of space with their very nice foliage.

You could also plant a nice big shrub behind them, too. A ninebark or a dogwood would look lovely there.

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Indygrrl,
In looking at the photos, it looks like you need to build up the beds a bit with more organic material (compost, soil conditioner, etc) for better success. Not just the holes you plant in, but the whole bed. Mound it up a bit, then mulch to keep it moist. From those photos, it looks dry. The area under the overhang, in addition to being shady, will likely be dry as well.

There’s plenty of perennials that do well in shade, but the real success will be if you have decent soil to start with, and keep up on watering. Go to a local nursery and see what grows best in your area. See if you can find one that grows at least a portion of their plants themselves, they’ll have more knowledge. Often, these days, the shiny Big Box store plants look great at the store, but are jacked up on chemicals to make them bloom like “eye candy” on the racks. When these plants go into the ground under less than optimal conditions, they sit and sulk after the initial bloom, and sometimes just poop out, or take awhile to recover.

So, find a nursery that sells good healthy plants grown in “real” conditions. These folks are the ones who love to garden as well, and can give you good advice. I’m a Southern gardener, so the plants I know and love might not be the best for Indiana.

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Shade-loving shrub: Azaleas. Plus you get spring color with them.

A great shade perennial – hostas. They’re not just the wussy green and white ones your granny grew – I’ve got some huge, gorgeous blue-green ones, and a couple of chartreuse-and-dark-green ones that I think are stunning. A clump can get up to five feet across in a few years.

Peonies, OTOH, need full sun. If you’ve got hostas and peonies in the same bed, one of them is in the wrong place.

ETA: elelle knows whereof she speaks – improve the soil. Add a couple of inches of compost now, and every year from now on. You don’t need to be fancy and till it in or anything (though that’s not a bad idea while you’re getting started) – just spread it across the top of the bed and let it do its magic.

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Sage. Prefers sunny conditions and dry soil. :wink:

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I agree with featherlou and twickster about the soil problem. You’ve got really bad soil, from what I can tell from the photos. You need to amend it heavily…adding compost (most medium-to-large cities have free composting stations, if you load it yourself) every year is a very good idea. In a few years, the extant soil fauna (worms, mostly) will have everything integrated. Don’t stop laying compost then, though…compost renews the soil’s nutrients (which get depleted just by the plants using them), so keep it up every year.

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Forgot my disclaimer - I’m a zone 3 gardener, so check your local zone for what grows in your area. I don’t think of things like azaleas because they aren’t a very popular choice here (they will grow to zone 4, but they just don’t thrive with little intervention here like lilacs, dogwoods, caragana, etc.). Azaleas sound like a great choice for a shady, dry area, but they sound kind of fussy to grow.

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How can I add the compost and other good dirt type stuff? Can I do it with these plants already in place or should I dig them up and re-plant after I’ve blended? Or do you just lay compost over the hard dirt?

Same question with that shady part of the perennial bed. Can I blend the good stuff around the bushes, or how is that done?

Also, do you have to dig really deep to do this or can you just use a hoe and begin that way?

I’m going to go out tomorrow and see about some foliage annuals. I think I can get a bunch pretty cheap right now and I’m interested in experimenting. Coleus, nicotina…and I will see what else they have at the greenhouse.

RE: the mums question
I dug those old mums up after they didn’t do anything last fall, so my intention is to put new ones in place this year towards the end of summer.

I really love you guys for knowing these things. I find that almost any question I have can be intelligently answered by several Dopers. This place rocks my world. :slight_smile:

Oh, and is this the zone thing you are talking about?
http://www.growit.com/bin/USDAZoneMaps.exe?MyState=IN

Thanks again!

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Yes, that is the “zone” thing we’re talking about – it refers to minimum winter temperature. Where you are, azaleas should be fine – do you see a lot of them blooming in May?

How to add compost – if you’re starting a new bed, you can dig it in throughout. If there’s nothing in the bed now, rent a rototiller and add a shitload. I don’t know the math offhand, but if you buy it in bulk, it comes by the cubic yard, which will spread an area X feet square Y number of inches deep – figure out your rough square footage and get enough for 3" or so to do a good job. You may want to add other amendments, depending on the kind of soil you have – sandy, clayey, etc. (Take a handful of damp soil and squeeze it. If it falls apart immediately, it’s sandy – add peat moss in addition to the compost. If it forms a tight ball, it’s clayey – add sand in addition to the compost. If it holds its shape but gently, it’s probably okay other than being nutrient-poor.)

If you’re adding compost to existing beds, rake the beds with a garden rake (which has short, stiff tines parallel to each other – not the same as a lawn rake, which has long, flexible tines in a fan pattern) to scratch the surface – just work around the plants that are in there. Spread the compost by hand, going close to existing plants but not burying them, then use the garden rake to even things out a bit.

Single best book for newbies: Barbara Damrosch’s Garden Primer. Your second purchase should probably be The Big Book of Garden Skills.

You might also want to find a good, how-to oriented magazine to subscribe to … :wink:

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Hey! That’s my current favorite flower! It smells positively divine after the sun goes down. I’m talkin’ serious perfumage here. Here’s mine:

Imgur

However, right now there a far fewer blooms. A website I looked at said to prune it. I’m not sure how far down I’m supposed to go. Anyone know? Also, how long will it take to come back?

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bolding mine

Be wary of your city/county free compost. If it is made of yard waste picked up from around the area, it can be contaminated with weed seeds and/or pesticides because not everyone in your area is going to be careful about what they throw in the yard waste. A few years ago a local government compost pile was tested and they found lots of pesticides in it from treated lawn clippings. Even though municipalities put restriction on the things that can be put in the composting material, some people are jerks and disregard the rules.

You should also ask where your retail supplier gets their material. One of the local suppliers was selling aged bark from the plywood mill, which would have been fine if I hadn’t known they had a huge petroleum release on the property and that some of that bark came from there. Some of the “topsoil” you can buy around here is from former orchard land and therefore likely contaminated with lead and arsenic. You have to go far and wide in my area to find clean topsoil and fill, and you pay for it (I had to bring in three dumptruck loads of fill and an additional three of topsoil when we were first landscaping our lot).

Enough doom and gloom…it’s a beautiful day in the desert, and I have yard work to do!

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Ok, this is what I want to do, but should I dig up those lilies in order to make that area more hospitable? They were just planted a few days ago, so I don’t know if it would hurt them or not.

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Nah, don’t worry about it – just spread it around the plants – the “good stuff” seeps down.

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In addition to the great instruction twickster has already given, here’s something I just learned recently - no-till gardening. You would start with amending your beds and getting them in shape with turning over the compost and working it in, but after that, a layer of organic mulch on top should be enough - don’t keep on turning over the soil, as this encourages weed growth and breaks down the humus and structure of the soil. As it says in the article I learned this from, Mother Nature gardens from the top down. Don’t walk on your beds, either, to prevent soil compaction. Only turn it over again in the future if it becomes very compacted.

stretch, our neighbour filled the space between our houses with tree mulch he got somewhere, and that crappy mulch has grown so many weeds it isn’t funny. Not just weeds, but TREES! We could have a whole grove of poplars (I think they are) in the 10 feet between our houses if we weren’t busy trying to kill it all off. Yeah, be careful of the compost and mulch you get.

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My wife, the gardener, says that you should consider begonias as well. She also says that in your hardiness zone, impatiens should do well.

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I have the rule of never walk on the beds. Compaction of the soil will harm the plants greatly. Keep to the rule and you can use mulches, and not dig the beds every year, and what you do dig will be easy.

You should plan your beds now for next year and don’t just throw in plants. You already have conflicts showing up. You’ll enjoy the beds more when you plant what works together and in the correct conditions. I recommend a notebook and you write down what died and what did good. Enter when it bloomed and stuff like that. Write down the first frost in the fall, and the last frost in the spring. Stuff like that will be a big help when planning in the future. I also note where the sun hits in the beds at different times of year, so I can reference fact and not my memory.

I noticed a delphinium in the back of a bed, in what you said was mostly shade. Plant it in the bed the lilies are in if that’s full sun. You need full sun, or all you’ll have is a small wussy plant. Next year you’ll need to stake it or like I do use a wire cage to support the plant. It will take three years minimum for the plants to get huge. I maintain a spot about 7x7 in size with delphinium, and they will do better like that, because they help support each other in storms. You should plant them about one and a half feet apart, and they will fill in as they get older.

I would recommend a soil mixture of half original soil and half organic peat. It has proved the best blend for me over the years, and my plants tend to be larger than normal. Beds should be double dug. You remove one layer withe the fork, and then another layer. You should be about two feet deep and now you fill in from where you need to dig yet. It’s more complicated, but is an old method given on many pages. double digging - Google Search

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Soil prep is huge.

I like laying around a little elbow grease, so with those beds, I’d go in with a spade, and chop them up, then shovel in some LeafGro and peat moss. Turn it all over, and you’ll have some dark, rich soil. You can find those things at garden stores. I’d work in some “worm castings” for fetilizer.

You also might want to look around at books, internet, other yards for thoughts on a little “landscape design”. Your main bed looks like a mess to me (no offense). If you’re going to have space, you need to fill in with mulch. Your beds look unfinished.

I just googled “indiana landscaping” and found this site. It has results from a contest where people submitted their landscape designs.

http://www.louisvilleky.gov/APCD/lawncare/DesignContestWinners2005.htm#aWinners

It even lists a “mixed sun/shade division” winner. If you click on a winner, you can see plant lists, and finished designs.

And, also. . .just be patient. Learn what grows, what you like to take care of, how things spread.

Maybe you want to have a bed for herbs?

You could use some height maybe. . .some shrus like Nandina or Itea, or whatever your local garden stores have. Or maybe put up a trellis and a vine. . .like clematis, or hops or honeysuckle.

Start by looking around though, and don’t try to do it all in one year.