Easy to grow, Low Maintenance Plants for the Garden

Over Christmas we traveled a little.  Not much, we never go very far.  We just visited with family.  One evening a family member asked me if I knew of some attractive, easy to grow, low maintenance plants she could put in the front of her house.  She wanted something she could plant that wouldn't require a whole lot of time to maintain since she has a young baby and a busy work schedule.  Low-maintenance plantings shouldn't need much pruning, supplemental watering, and should continue to re-bloom without deadheading if at all possible.  Essentially low maintenance plants should thrive on neglect! The list of plants below includes the three I suggested as well as several others that several gardeners on Facebook suggested!

Easy to grow, Low-Maintenance Plant Suggestions for Home Gardeners

• 

  'Homestead Purple' Verbena

  Verbena - annual or perennial verbena forms either a nice mound or a sprawling groundcover.  'Homestead Purple' verbena is a perennial favorite perennial here in our garden.  It comes back each year if it is planted in a location that is well drained.  A butterfly favorite!
• Lantana - lantana looks great in pots or planted in the ground.  
• Zinnia - zinnias come in all shapes and sizes from small little button ones to tall dahlia like flowers. They are an annual but can reseed and bring back blooms each year.
  
• Marigold - Marigolds are often maligned as too common but for sheer impact they can be impressive!  Try looking for heirloom varieties for something a little different. Marigolds grow very easily from seed which you can collect at the end of the season and replant next year.  Marigolds are planted in companion planting designs with tomatoes to repel root nematodes.
• Portulaca - a succulent bloomer that serves well as a groundcover
• Sweet Potato Vine - Sweet potato vines are an excellent groundcover that really takes care of itself.  I like to put a lime green colored potato vine with a purple colored one.  Sweet potato vines root easily from cuttings which allows you to fill up large areas very quickly.  Pin down a vine to encourage rooting along the stem to spread the vine where you want it to grow.  Sadly it's only an annual here in Tennessee.

  

  Purple Sweet Potato Vine with Moonflowers

• Nigella - also known as Love-In-A-Mist is a flowering annual easily grown from seed.
• Annual Vinca - make sure if you plant vinca that you only choose the annual kind!  Perennial vinca is extrenmely invasive.
• Heuchera - I'm a big fan of heucheras and try to adda few more each year.  Plant breeders are coming out with more varieties than I have places to put them!  Typically heucheras enjoy dry, well drained, and shady locations but newer more sun tolerant heucheras like 'Southern Comfort' are on the market.  They need divided every few years but generally are extremely low maintenance.
  
• Monarda - Bee balm is a great plant for attracting bees and butterflies as you would expect based on its name.  Shorter varieties are available.  They can suffer from powdery mildew so make sure to water at the base of the plant and not the leaves.  'Jacob Kline' is one of the more mildew resistant varieties.
  
• Sedums - sedums are another succulent that really does well when neglected. 
• Rudbeckia - Black-eyed Susans are extremely attractive flowers that are very low-maintenance.  They can have a tendency to spread if allowed to go to seed but can be weeded out each spring.  Rudbeckia is a good plant for pollinators.

I hope these suggestions help you when planning your garden. This is a short list of many possible options and if you have other suggestions to offer please comment!  Please remember that your experience may differ from other gardeners due to soil conditions, weather, and other climate factors and the plants listed above may or may not grow as well in your garden as they might in mine.  

The Off-season

I'll simply title this next picture the off-season. If you garden, you know exactly what I mean!

The leftovers of an Echinacea purpurea (Purple coneflower) seed head after the birds have visited.

Save the Mums!

Mums are the staple of almost every household in the fall because of their abundant fall blossoms and varied array of colors. One thing many people don't think about is that they are actually perennials. Some people realize this of course, but often people treat them as annuals only to buy them all over again next year. That is fine I guess if you want to spend money on mums year after year, but why dispose of something you could reuse again next year? A few small steps can save those mums and save you money.

If your mums are already in the ground then you have it easy. Just clip the dead growth back to 3-5 inches and cover with a good layer of mulch over winter. In the spring when new growth starts keep the branches pinched back to 6 inches or so until the middle of July or a little later if you live in warmer climates. Pinching the mums creates lateral branches for a fuller, more robust plant. If your plants are in pots find a good sheltered location in your yard and put them in the ground. Then follow the steps for an in ground mum. When new growth starts in the spring pot it up again in a large pot and follow the previously mentioned pinching procedures! You may want to trim a couple roots to initiate new root growth.

You might ask why did I choose to mention this? Two days ago I saw a person in our neighborhood dispose of 6-7 potted mums in the trash. I was very tempted to go through their trash to save the mums but just could bring myself to actually go through someone else's trash. They should have at least composted them! Just dumping them in an unused corner of the yard would be enough to make a little compost and save a few cubic feet of landfill space. Don't let good mums go bad, save the mums!

Chilly Week Ahead - Warm Weeks Behind (Part 2)

Tuesday find ourselves cold again - waking up to temperatures in the mid teens in our little frost pocket. Fortunately the garden shed stayed about 10 degrees warmer without any extra heat. I hope to eventually add something for heating purposes but for now the shed is overwintering many of the plants I made from cuttings. Yesterday's look back post ended with photos from June today we'll finish with a few photos from the other warm months!

July 2010 - July brought us a new addition to the family with the birth of my son. On the day he was born I was out with my two daughters in the garden on a warm and windy day. They picked flowers and played in the summer sun knowing that they would both be big sisters soon!

July 1, 2010

July also brought many flowers to the garden like this combination of Russian sage, rudbeckia, and Shasta daisy. The daisies are very easy to root from stem cuttings or through division.

August 2010 - The months beyond July found us extremely dry. Very little rain fell in August which meant that only the toughest plants did much - but there's always something to see in the garden! The crape myrtles were covered in blooms near the arbor and one of the most delicious tomatoes was harvested from the vegetable garden: the Woodle Orange!

September 2010 - September brought many of the fall blooming flowers into the game. The caryopteris row was making progress and the Sweet Autumn clematis looked like mounds of snow in September.

And of course I finally managed to paint the garden shed!

October 2010 - October is probably the last of the reliable warm months here in Tennessee. The temperatures are cooler and nearly perfect for garden activities. November - not so much (although we did have several good days this yea in November). Mums and salvias were blooming all over and the fall colors were changing.

The Sheffield Pink mums were a new addition in the spring and proved to be an awesome addition to the garden.

October also found me cleaning up the vegetable garden (here's the vegetable garden layout) from the summer crops. There's still more to do but I'm not in a big rush to finish - not when it's 25 degrees outside!

Thanks for joining me on this look back at the warmer months. The good news is that winter doesn't last forever! Now it's time to start thinking about seeds!

Chilly Week Ahead - Warm Weeks Behind

Today is the Monday morning of what promises to be the coldest week of the Fall/Winter season 2010. The temperatures are predicted to be in the 30's for highs and teens for lows with is about 15-20 degrees colder than the normal temperatures. I thought I would take a moment with this post and tomorrow's post and think about those warmer days from the spring and summer that make us gardeners excited to be outdoors soaking up that vitamin D! (click on any of the pictures or links to see the original posts)

March 2010 - The first daffodils in began blooming. In contrast the daffodil foliage in some areas of the yard are beginning to peek out of the soil - hope of things to come!

April 2010 - The garden in April is always full of blooms. Tulips line our from walkway and the Yoshino cherry is covered in blossoms. In contrast today everything is bare although I did plant pansies where the tulips are for some cool season color.

May 2010 - May brings more awesome blossoms to the eye. Catmint and achillea are a great combination, and the Irises look pretty good too! May is also the time of the salvias in our garden! The beginning of May also brought us more water than we could handle in the form of flooding rains.

June 2010 - The beginning of summer! I miss those warm days already. Coneflowers and many others were nourishing the pollinators and the vegetable garden was producing tomatoes! I miss those fresh from the garden tomatoes too!

I'll continue with more warmer days tomorrow! How's the weather in your garden?

Can You Identify This Rose?

I'm definitely no expert in roses.  Recently I saw this rose blooming at my mother-in-law's home and was curious as to it's identity. The insides of the bloom are a creamy yellow color while the outside of the petals are a kind of red-peach color. The rose has a cluster of four flowers which make it most likely a type of floribunda or grandiflora (For more information on roses: All American Rose Selections).  With such an amazing variety of roses in existence it may be impossible to identify with 100% accuracy what this one is but I'm hoping someone out there might have a clue!

I ended up taking four cuttings from this rose bush as well as about 8-10 other rose cuttings of two other varieties. So far in rose propagation I've scored and grand total of one rooted rose (out of 8-10 from the plant swap). I haven't had many opportunities to try propagating roses but I can tell you that maintaining the proper level of moisture on the roses is imperative. I've heard from several people who have recommended different methods of rose propagation from misting, to the soda bottle method, and even the jar covering method. The one I've rooted was without any covering in plain old sand for rooting medium. Since it was the only one of its group to succeed I would advise some sort of moisture containing covering to root them.

I'm definitely learning as I go with the roses!

Here's some good information I found about rooting roses from Texas A&M.

Can you identify my mystery rose?

Flowering in Fall

Fall is well known for its colorful foliage that paints the country each year but there's still lots to appreciate among the flowering plants!  Here's a few of our current blooming flowers from the garden.  Some don't have much longer to go until the frost declares an end to the show.

The 'Clara Curtis' mums put on a spectacular show by our front walkway each year.  They get a little large and spread via rhizomes so make sure you have space for them before you plant.  These are one of the last blooms in our garden to show off every year. Sure makes for a good finish!

The 'Sheffield Pink' mums look so similar to the 'Clara Curtis' that the only reason I know the difference is because I know where I planted them!

Gaillardia or Blanket Flower is a great repeat bloomer that keeps going thorough out the summer and well into the fall.  If I dead headed it there would be more blooms but I have some seed collecting plans ahead.

The reblooming white iris is putting on some more flowers.  If you like irises you need a few reblooming irises to enjoy all summer!

'Green Envy' zinnias are in the front garden.  I got the seed from Renee's Garden this spring. I think they could have used a location with a little more sun which may have brought out the green coloration better.

I planted these coleus plants from seed and now I'm letting it go to seed.  Within a week I'll collect what I can from them to replant next year.  The leaves on these plants were huge - 6"-8" in some cases - probably due to the compost rich soil I planted them in.

The Fall Colors beginning to turn along the back property line.  It's mostly sassafras trees but the maples are also beginning their seasonal changes.  I hope you'll join us for the Fall Color Project 2012 to share your best fall foliage!

For more October bloom go visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens for Bloomsday!

What's Blooming in October?

It's already time for another look at what's blooming in my garden for Garden Blogger's Bloom Day. It's mid-October and the trees are just beginning to turn but there are still plenty of blooms to see. And if you're interested in showing off your fall foliage colors then please participate in the Garden Blogger Fall Color Project!

Here's what blooming in our Tennessee garden:

The Pink Cosmos is doing very well right now next to the vegetable garden. I planted a couple seeds in the early summer and now the blooms are showing up in the fall.




In the front sidewalk garden we have mums, a butterfly bush, Russian sage, Gaillardia, daylilies, and a Black and Blue salvia blooming.




Here's the Black and Blue Salvia. It's easy to see where it found it's name.



The Russian sage has been blooming all summer. I'm not sure anything else in our garden has been as prolific. That's just another great reason to plant it. Just make sure your garden has full sun!


The 'Mystic Spires' Salvia is just beginning to go to seed. It was a hummingbird favorite this year that I picked up on the discount rack. It looks like Mr. Bee is still enjoying it.


Here's a 'Stella d'Oro' Daylily that decided it wasn't done yet!



Speaking of hummingbird favorites the zinnias are still blooming. Unfortunately they are starting to get the dreaded powdery mildew. It doesn't bother me too much since we are so close to the end of the 2008 growing season. Time to collect seeds and plan for next year.


This achillea (yarrow) in the rain garden was taken from a cutting near the mailbox garden. Achillea are fairly easy to root.


I still have some sunflowers growing. This one is tucked into the birdbath garden. I planted the seed in the summer to have some blooms this fall and provide the birds with a little more food to eat.


And now you get to see something I've been waiting for, the Monarch butterfly! I was afraid we wouldn't get to see any this year but just recently a few stopped by for a visit on the asclepias.


I think our garden may be along a migratory route. I hope they find plenty of nourishment for the trip.

Thanks for stopping by to see the blooms!

Thank you Carol for hosting GBBD!