Planting Last Fall Perennials for a Beautiful Summer Garden Next Year

We started with eight plants from the $1 markdown table at the garden center.  This collection of perennials needing a good home were all in good health, and most were flowers that I planned to get – sometime – but there are two that slipped in.

The plant second from the right back row isn’t marked.  I wasn’t sure what it was when I bought it, but it was in great shape and, well, it was a buck and it needed to get planted and our garden has some empty holes.  So it came home with me.

Here is a close up.

 

Do you think it is a liatris or Gayfeather?  I like liatris.  They are tall, not real wide, with fuzzy rose purple or white flowers on long stems.  Here is a pretty photo from Parks Seeds website.

Floristan Violet Blazing Star Image from Parks Seeds Website

I’m not sure what this is.  We’ll have a surprise next summer.

I put the mystery plant near phlox and iris.  Our garden only has phlox, iris, daylilies and peonies with a smattering of dianthus and mums, so it’s not like I had a lot of choice.   Plant of Mystery could go with phlox and iris, or phlox and peonies, or daylilies and peonies – you get the idea.

If this is Liatris it will look good there and it will bloom after the iris are done.

The other plant that kind of slipped in was a case of mistaken identity.  I like delphiniums and want to get some blue ones.  Don’t these leaves look a little like delphinium leaves?  Maybe?

Once the little guy got home I had a return of sanity and realized it is a perennial geranium.  I know many of you probably love perennial geraniums.   Someone, somewhere must be able to get the plants blanketed with bright colored flowers that the flower catalogs show.

Geranium sanguineum Elke Photo from White Flower Farms Website

All the perennial geraniums around here are full of leaves that turn brown in late summer with a few sporadic flowers.  Yes, the individual flowers are ok looking, but 5 sad little flowers on a two foot wide expanse of so-so leaves that turn brown a month before everything else turns brown, somehow removes the charm.  Can you tell I am not a fan?

Anyway, our poor little plant still needed a home and I do have a spot in the back long narrow bed by the fence.  That gets threatened daily by invading weeds and I don’t have anything permanent planted in the corner.  That’s where our new geranium lives now.

As for our delphinium cravings?  That’s next year’s garden.