Oh well this kind of thing I could probably grow. Like, I seem to do fine with dandelions and bindweed.
I have planted these in the past. They are one of my failures. Black thumb. I agree, they’re neat. :o
Four o’clocks sound good. I had a neighbor who had some, growing essentially wild on one side of her house. She did nothing to them except to tie them back so she could walk down her sidewalk on that side. Hm…
Aha, I think salvia is that purple thing I mentioned that is growing as if wild in untended places. Good to know.
If I had the money I would definitely hire a landscape designer, and then someone responsible to make sure I didn’t kill them.
Mm, honeysuckle. But I think my area might be too narrow. It is about six feet, but right in the middle is a walkway. But there is something it could climb on–a fence–if it didn’t get too bushy.
I have tried ice plant, and it did okay for one year but did not come back. (I don’t even know if it was supposed to come back, but I thought it would. But no.) The Russian sage, I think did not get enough sunlight.
I have failed with Russian sage, and I had some lilies at one time but they also disappeared.
I probably should mention that my soil could be used to pave a tennis court. Or make pots out of. I have tried to mix in potting soil. But then the instructions on my dahlia said to use garden soil, not potting soil.
Do you think it’s too late in the year to plant that autumn joy sedum? I googled it. That looks beautiful.
Hey, guys, thanks. Lots of good ideas here. I realize that I am probably starting too late in the year to grow things from seeds.
I did plant a freesia bulb, or I guess it was a bunch of them. Someone told me they were super easy. Well, it never did anything. I…keep…watering it. I think I’ve killed it. So frustrating. I am really not good at this at all.
All my mother does with hers is put a sheet of transparent plastic (the kind used for greenhouses in the Sea of Plastic) over the plants during the winter, and stop watering until the plastic is removed. I only water occasionally (very occasionally) and the geraniums are perfectly happy; that’s in a location which can see snowfalls in August.
In college my window had these pink ones with small flowers, called Gitanilla, which are climbers: since they had no trellis, they fell down to cover my neighbor’s window instead. I apologized when I saw that but she pointed out that her view behind the flowers was of a red brick wall: the flowers were much prettier. This was in Barcelona, where snow falls about once every twenty years: no need to cover the plants at all.
Yeah, I forgot to mention they are quite bug and fungus resistant. I might see an occasional bite taken out of a leaf, but that’s about it.
The name and the being poisonous to bugs were tickling my brain; I checked and yes, four o’clocks are the kind called in Spanish dondiego de noche (Don Diego by night). In Spain they’re sometimes combined with dondiego de día (Don Diego by day), which looks similar and needs similar care but closes and opens in opposite patterns. The scientific name of this other plant is Ipomoea Purpurea.
I never realized that was a type of rose. They truly get everywhere, though.
You won’t be able to buy them again (as plants, that is, from seeds they’re not very easy) until the fall when the icicle type that survives over winter is sold, but pansies are pretty easy. I bought bunches about seven or eight weeks ago, and due to difficulty finding enough plants in the two colors I wanted inadvertently ended up keeping some of the poor things in the basement almost two weeks, watering them 3-4 times a week while they languished in the dark. I planted them in three big plastic tubs, dead-headed them, and put them out on the deck. I haven’t touched them since - not even watering them - and they’re thriving.
This thread has inspired me to plant a row of flowers along my mom’s back fence. Using a location visible from her dining table.
Too late this year. This needs to be done after the last frost in mid March.
The Plan is to strip off the grass on a 2ft wide x 6 ft area. Lightly rake out the dirt to break it up. Scratch in Marigold seed nearest the fence and scratch in a row of Cosmos at the front.
Once established, it should reseed and grow every Spring for years to come.
I haven’t tried Cosmos before. But several articles say it’s almost like a weed and is prolific.
No, you can plant perennials all summer long! They will be happier planted in the spring or fall, but Denver doesn’t really have those anyway. 
If you can find an Autumn Joy (or three), go ahead and plant them. Yarrow and creeping thyme will also do well in hot areas with crappy soil (do go ahead and dump the occasional bag of compost there, though. It’ll help.)
Edited to add: I lived in Denver for almost thirty years, and I’ve successfully grown all of these things in that climate.
Summer is generally very good time to plant seed of perennials in temperate climates. Seedlings just need to be kept adequately watered and maybe sheltered from midday sun.
By fall you should have good-sized plants which can be transplanted to permanent locations, and they can put down a good root system by hard frost.
Hostas are perennials that can be planted any time. They have pretty purple flowers. They are bullet proof.
Agreed. I plant things right up until freeze-up here - some make it, some don’t, but I buy the end of season plants at 75% off, and I don’t much care. 
Yarrow was one of the ones I forgot to mention - it’s a weed here. You can get some more well-behaved cultivars at the greenhouse that are lovely. I’ve seen some very nice yellow and red ones. All the thymes are also good, as well as lemon balm.
Some landscape designer tips (I was a landscape designer for a time) - make your flower beds BIG! That’s one of the biggest errors amateur gardeners make - scrimping on the bed size. A postage-stamp sized bed in a huge yard is going to look kind of silly.
Plant the right plants in the right place - shade plants in shade, full sun plants in full sun, etc. Pay attention to the mature size, too. I’ve seen far too many blue spruces planted right next to a house or sidewalk - blue spruces can get up to 75 feet tall, with a commensurate spread!
Put a one dollar plant in a ten dollar hole. That means, the soil you put the plant in is a lot more important than the exact plant. You don’t need to replace the soil in your entire yard - I tend to condition soil on a bed-by-bed basis, or even a plant-by-plant basis. I dig a big, deep hole for a new plant, and put a really good compost, topsoil, vermiculite, peat moss mix in the hole.
Mulch, mulch, mulch. You want a somewhat fine mulch, not the huge bark chips that you see so often. Mulch keeps moisture in the soil, prevents weed growth, and works into the soil to help add organics. I use a well-chopped cedar mulch on all my beds.
I always found begonias to be extremely forgiving.
To balance that out, a huge planting area that the gardener doesn’t have the time/energy to maintain will become weed-ridden and deteriorate.
Strive for the happy medium.
You might try catmint. It’s tough and grows quickly and has beautiful blue flowers that attract a lot of butterflies. Chamisa has yellow flowers in the fall and is so tough you couldn’t kill it if you nuked it from orbit. Its main drawback is that it can get fairly large.
I know this is great advice. But for someone who (a) hates gardening and (b) is not good at it which (3) might be the same thing–this just gives me the idea that I should probably (1) write a novel which is (2) a best-seller, and (3) use profit to hire gardener. Because this is all just a bit more hearty than I can make myself get.
I should have listed the plants I have killed. Plants that should have, according to their PR, come back year after year, on their own, but did not. What I want is the things that are growing like wildfire in alleys and other places where no one is taking care of them, and they look beautiful. Things that come back year after year.
Yeah, but I think they are not perennials. I got a couple, a couple of years ago. Ruby begonias. I think they came back for one year, now they are dead.
Actually, after my cats ate some tulips I brought into the house, my son gave me a catmint plant for each one of my kitttens. I have repotted it and it’s not dead yet, and whenever a kitten escapes (they are supposed to be indoor cats) that kitten is attracted to these pots, so I can catch him and put him back inside. Now I’ve only had these plants about a month so I have not killed them yet. But on the other hand, I haven’t killed them yet, and I’ve killed plenty of plants in a month although, admittedly, it usually takes me longer. A little longer.
I have got a rue plant. Or bush. I planted it nine years ago, and I’m sorry, because it has taken over and pushed out some other plants that were prettier. It allegedly has yellow flowers, which is why I got it. But these flowers always look like they’re about to open up, and then they never open up. And yet the rue gets bigger and bigger. So on the one hand, this is the kind of thing I want. Something that will thrive without a lot of attention. Or any attention. But prettier.
(But on the plus side, here is a plant I have had for nine years and have not killed, unlike the begonia, the hostas, the basket of gold, the ox-eye daisies–ox-eye daisies for god’s sake–the lavender, the yarrow, the Russian sage, the hyssop, and, apparently, the freesia. To list a few.)