Changes in the Garden – What Didn’t Work in 2016

This spring I changed one garden bed, moving peonies (aka attempting to move peony roots almost two feet square) and planting more summer-blooming gold/red perennials together in the now-open space.

We purchased several plants both locally and mail order and I had high hopes they would thrive and make that section summer splendor.  Here the bed shows markers and new plants.

I planted achillea Coronation Gold, tall yarrow with rich colored flat heads and straight stems to contrast with the lighter yellow achillea we had, gaillardia shorter red and gold, deep rose phlox, hybrid goldenrod, then moved the perennial sunflower and rudbeckia to better play off the other flowers.

You know what they say about best laid plans.  My mail order plants arrived healthy and ready to go and locally the master gardener sale offered plants nice and bushy, several varieties we wanted including Bright Eyes phlox.

Bright Eyes Phlox Photo Linked from American Meadows

Something (or someone) dug up and ate every single one of the the mail order flowers down to the roots.  It apparently like the fiber pots!  The company graciously refunded the cost but my beautiful garden plans were thwarted.  I ended up putting a daylily in, which may work out OK and transplanted several cosmos volunteers to fill in the empty spots.

Unfortunately most of the cosmos volunteers turned out to be weedy, huge and scant of flower.  Other years my cosmos reseeders have been great but this year most were nasty.  I ripped out the last ones this week.  They were as tall as I, enormous with brittle stems, all done flowering.

There were some winners in this section.  The goldenrod managed to come up despite being gobbled up and was a beautiful shade of gold, and the surviving phlox was pretty.  I marked the spots to replacing the eaten-up phlox and Coronation Gold and add a Goblin gaillardia.  That should tie in the colors from adjacent daylilies and the perennial sunflowers and brown eyed Susans.

The daylilies adjacent to this section bloomed well and the flowers in the narrow strip behind also bloomed and blended in with this bed.  We enjoyed many sunny days with flowers happy to bloom and grow!

Unfortunately the other problem with this section is harder to fix.  This bed is 20 feet long and a woodchuck has moved in on the other end.  So far we have not been able to evict him!

Next post I’ll show off what we’re doing with the Sweet William section.