Grey Days and Scarlet Sage

[ursulav]

It’s a grey day in the garden, and it’s beautiful.

Why this particular grey day is beautiful, and the last handful just made me want to sleep for a week, I will leave for the reader-either you know the difference in greys or you don’t, and there’s not much point in explaining it. Possibly it has to do with the thunderstorm that is wandering around

Comments

[firelizard5]

I also spent the day puttering away outside. Anyone have a suggestion for a good NC native flower that can survive full sun but doesn't get huge? I want to put in a bed around the mailbox, because it is a pain to mow.

[ursulav]

What's the moisture like? And define "huge" in this context. *grin*

[firelizard5]

It's at the top of a hill, so it has good drainage (or at least as good as it can be, on clay).

It needs to stay below the level of the box. We have a snarky mailman who writes DO NOT BLOCK BOX on the mail if anything is even close to it.

[ursulav]

Hmm, fair amount of options. A compact aster might not be bad, though you'd want to keep it clipped occasionally. If it's genuinely well drained, you can do a coreopsis, which wouldn't get too tall (as long as you don't get, y'know, Tall Tickseed or something.) Black-eyed susans are pretty well unkillable. Tradescantia--spiderwort--would probably be my choice, since they have tough, day-lily like foliage, don't get over-tall (though they'll expand out) and have attractive purple flowers in spring and occasional fall, plus being extremely tough. (A really murderous summer will send them dormant, in which case you'd want to plug in petunias or something until they revive.)

[brenda_ea]

A lot of tall flowers will do all right if you chop them off early in the summer - they'll grow back and bloom, just not so high. (I have asters that tend to flop over if I don't do this.)

[neotoma]

I'd be cautious if you do plant spiderwort. It's pretty, but it will take over a flowerbed and try to make inroads into a lawn. I've got some one of the other tenants planted before they moved out, and I'm going to have to rip it out before it kills the rosebush -- and the hedge.

At least it's not as bad of the mint, of which there was 10 square feet of. In a flowerbed!

You might look into getting local flowers that butterflies like -- lots of asters are fairly pretty, not too tall, and good for nectarivorous insects.

[firelizard5]

Thanks; I think I'll try an aster. I am always happy to have more bees and butterflies.

[firelizard5]

Am I the only person in the world who actually can't grow mint? I've tried in ground and in a pot, and it always dies on me.

Okay, one was strangled to death by the rosemary. The others were mystery deaths, though.

[abb3w]

Varieties have differing hardiness. I've found chocolate mint to be a little fragile (though nifty enough to keep buying small pots until I was able to get a patch established). The "Kentucky Colonel" and Applemint varieties seemed particularly hardy. Peppermint and spearmint were in between. I've heard lemon and pinapple mints are less vigorous.

Enough shade can have it struggling. So can too-small pots plus under-watering. Or really bad drainage. Trying to grow in ground that's underwater more than one 24-day in seven also leaves it unhappy, but that's most garden plants. In-ground, a few weeks initial watering helps.

I suppose there could be soil with too extreme a pH for mint, but I think that would probably show up on other plants.

[ursulav]

I frequently kill "unkillable" plants. Passionflower, for example. Everybody talks about what a screaming weed it is, how once you've got it, it's everywhere. I've killed four of the damn things, and if this last one doesn't make it, I'm done.