Stachys byzantina 'Helen von Stein' (big ears) is my favorite and it has never bloomed. The smaller ones bloom and then they (to me) are a mess to deadhead and keep neat looking compared to big ears. Here's one of mine with a rose campion pretending to bloom out of it. :-) Thyme is also good. If you like lime/bright, the spirea 'Limemound' is a great little thing when used as a companion with plants of blue foliage/blooms. I have it beside a nepeta. I wish I could send you some of my creeping perennial heliotrope 'Azure Skies' as it blooms not stop from spring until frost. A great groundcover that resembles verbena. Totally deer and rabbit proof. It even floats across my stream and can take full sun or partial shade. A few plants and you can keep taking cuttings to create as much as you want.

Roflol, All the planning in the world isn't going to solve the problem. With WS you have so many seedlings that you have to just stuff them in somewhere and run away from them to get more. I think the best piece of advice I got about what to do with all my seedlings was from a 3 year old who was helping plant seedlings 2 years ago. He heard me moaning that I was running out of room in the garden beds to put all the seedlings. He looked at me with that puzzled look a 3 year old gets and said "no more room?" He kept looking at me and got up and walked all around the front yard, came back to me and said "dirt, dirt everywhere, dig a hole and drop them in." He then grabbed a container and my little shovel and started digging holes in the lawn, and all over, then he dropped seedlings in the holes. I was laughing and laughing, then realized how right he was. I had dirt all over the front yard, so where was the problem? I just started stuffing the garden beds with my seedlings. I dug up some of the lawn, who needs lawns right? Just stuff them in where ever there is dirt. Don't forget, there's always containers to put plants in too. Walmart has wonderful cheap pots that start at $.88 for an 8 inch container with a saucer. When you get desperate, as my hubby did last summer, when he had to help get the seedlings in for me, while I recouped from surgery, I found, even an engineer can be creative with his pot plantings. He just followed my lead and stuffed seedlings into pots. When I realized what he did, well it was too late to make changes. Some hubby creative planting pics different types of zinnias in one pot. he read zinnia only. balsam impatiens in the top of the strawberry jar, he put alyssum in the sides of one and my strawberry plants in the sides of another and portulacca in the third. the remaining 4 seedlings of 4'oclocks. he just stuffed them all in a 12 inch pot. They bloomed beautifully too. duck taped the leaking birdbath, filled it with miracle grow potting mix and put the drumonndi phlox and petunias in it. the last malva seedling, in a left over pot. 3 foot tall cactus zinnia in a 10 inch pot. He thought it would stay short cause it was so small. It grew quite well, with twisted and bent stems, but the flowers where full and normal and always facing up towards the sky. See, there's always a way to find more room, just dig a hole and put it in or fill a pot and put it in. Fran

I have everything on your list. I hauled in good garden soil by the dump truck loads and have clay or sandy soil(depending upon the area) under my good soil. Full sun, no Japanese Beetle damage, no serious deer or rabbit damage except for gaillardia. Gaillardia is munched a bit by either rabbits or deer. Right now, mine are loaded with buds but no munching has taken place at this point. They didn't destroy it last year, so I've left it in place. It is at the very edge of my garden that borders the meadow where the deer and bunnies can reach it, so it's a great test spot. Everything else on your list grows without any damage in my garden (and I have a herd of 20+ that sleep a few feet outside my garden and walk through the actual garden most nights and mornings). Baptisia takes a few years to mature, then it is spectacular. It probably has the shortest bloom season of everything on your list, but the foliage is beautiful to me. Find a permanent spot for it as it doesn't like to be moved once established (in my experience). Asclepias is a host plant for Monarch butterflies. So, if you plant it and they come, the caterpillars will munch it as food. You'll want to hide it back among your other plants unless you don't mind bare stems. My garden is a certified Monarch Waystation, so that's a good thing (to me). Monarch cat on aslepias Nepeta is blooming now and will bloom until frost. I shear mine when the blooms are spent and they come back. Bees love it, so I often have to wait until evening to do the trimming when the bees have given up their work for the day. Nepeta is my "go to" plant -- I use it throughout the garden as edging and as a companion to many other perennials. Nepeta behind the lavender: My lavender is blooming right now. I love my lavender! Plant it high and dry, don't fertilize it much at all, don't water it from above. I trim mine twice a year and get loads of blooms. I use a cordless Black & Decker HedgeHog trimmer to make fast work of all of my perennial trimmings. I've had great luck with agastache 'Blue Fortune' and an orange one (can't recall the name). I had terrible luck with the one called 'Heather Queen' in the drought. It was looking great, but hadn't gotten established well enough. I've seen no signs of it coming back this year. I'm going to try tutti-frutti this year. Blue Fortune Echinacea is one of those that gets deadheaded by the deer or bunnies when the first blooms appear. That's okay with me as I do it myself to promote more blooms. Once my plants were full, the deer left them alone. I tried the Sundown, Sunset, Harvest Moon and Rubinstern last year. The Harvest Moon didn't withstand the drought but they were newly planted last spring (as were all the others). I have written so many articles in my blog about gardening with deer. To see more information about my experience, just browse through this year's and last year's blogs. Hope this is helpful. Cameron Here is a link that might be useful: my gardening blog

One thing about ornamental grasses is their size - so many would take up a great deal of room in a 5'x4' area, and the smaller grasses often don't have the height. I'm growing Koeleria glauca in my rock garden - lean soil and no supplemental watering. So far I'm really impressed with this grass - with blooms it's between 2.5' to 3' tall (granted, we've had a lot of rain in May & June this year which could have caused it to be slightly taller than the normally stated 2'). It's blooming now and isn't taking up a great deal of width (maybe 8") - looks great with the dianthus, sedums, gypsophila's, etc. I started them last year from seed. I grow Overdam in the grass bed - they get the same treatment as everything else in that bed which is well drained soil, full sun and no supplemental watering. It's a nice grass, somewhat smaller in height than Karl Foerster. The variegation isn't pronounced enough (IMO) to make it special. Hope this helps.