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Tough Talk About Your Garden
Harden your heart. This is going to be a little rough. You need to make a hit list. Name the plants you really, if you had to, could live without. Remember, we need the room for new, truly spectacular plants. Here are some reasons certain plants have made my hit list: • Mildew magnets: You may have noticed some plant species seem to be particularly subject to mildew in its various forms. Plant breeders have now developed individual varieties that seem to be more able to resist mildew. For example, Phlox paniculata ‘David’ looks a lot like Phlox p. ‘Mount Fuji’ but doesn’t turn moldy every fall. Why not grow ‘David’? Monardas are notorious for contracting mildew, but a Dutch breeder has developed a line that is much more resistant. You can find it because all its cultivars are named for signs of the Zodiac. Is your Alcea (hollyhock) hiding in the back of your border because you would be embarrassed to let anyone see the first two feet of the plant? There are other members of the Malvaceae family that don’t seem to be bothered by mildew and have very similar blossoms: Lavatera, Malva akea and Malva moschuto come to mind. If you can’t replace them with look-alikes, let’s pull them and plant something new there this fall. • Slugs that Love Plants and the Plants that Love Them: I really like Ligularia tussilaginea ‘Aureo-maculata’ (leopard plant) and it grows well here. Unfortunately, slugs and snails like it better than I do. This fall something else will be growing there. I am not opposed to baiting slugs, but don’t want to do it as a daily chore. I have noticed they are partial to certain plants, plants that don’t live here anymore. Slugs also love Hostas, Lobelia and Deiphiniums. (I’ll fight for my Hostas, though). • Right Church, Wrong Pew: I have been known to put the occasional plant in clearly the wrong place. Sun-lovers find themselves in shade and don’t like it much. Move it to the right place, give it to someone who will put it in his or her right place, or send it down the road. • Copywriters’ Surprises: These are the plants that sounded absolutely wonderful in the catalog, but in your ground you can’t even recognize them from the description. Or the color photo shows one color but the plant is another color (one you happen to hate). Or sometimes mail order houses send the wrong plant Shocking. You are not obliged to live with these ag¬gravations. You have permission to put them on the hit list (we need the room for our beauti¬ful fall plantings). • The One-More-Year Club: These are the marginal players who somehow have insinuated their way into your heart. Every year you say to yourself, “this thing has to go,” but when it’s time to actually pull it up, you think, “I’ll give it just a little more time.” These are career problem plants and now is the time to set them free. • Good Plants Gone Bad: When I had lots of bare dirt, I could tolerate plants with expansion-ist plans. But, the day came: They have filled their space and are now busy invading neighboring territories. I need to stop their “blitzkrieg.” This is a good year for them to go. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com David Soper is a veteran gardener and author. His weekly newsletter is free and is available at www.gardenmagiconline.com/Newsletter.html. David's 5-Star rated book, 'Garden Magic In Your Backyard!' is available from Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format. |
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