C. octopus (white) cherry bells (dark pink) C. latifolia (dark blue) Looking for heucheras or other plants I don't have Please post here since I've had trouble with the email here.

Canterbury Bells (Campanula medium) is a favorite of mine, and a challenge to grow in this hot, dry climate. I love both the pink and purplish blue. If a customer at this Texas nursery buys the pictured blooming Canterbury Bells as a perennial and expects the plant to come back again next year, that person will be out of luck because Campanula medium is a biennial. I grew them from seed which meant waiting a year for blooms, and I just don't have the patience anymore. There is also a cup and saucer form, which I don't care for, but it seems to be a little easier to get around here. I've finally settled on good, old Blue Clips Campanula (carpatica). This stuff is tough as nails, laughs at heat, blooms all summer, if you shear it a little, and loves the sun, no matter what the little plastic tag says. I grow it in the hottest part of my garden. Here's a pic of one clump. Diane

I tried to make this plant happy, but it just wouldn't go. The spot I had it in was in good draing sand that stayed fairly moist. Any other self-respecting Campanula would love such an area, but not this one apparently. I agree with arboretum. I think the best thing you could do would be to put it on a sort of mound or slope in sun. Adding fine gravel wouldn't hurt either. Lol, mine bloomed but the leaves looked horrible! Mine died two years after planting, without spreading much. I am not sorry. It was just too much work to keep it alive. CMK

Alana, coming late to the discussion, but, yes, writing about being in pain but loving your garden and life and family--that's not depressing; that's VICTORY, and victory is inspiring. Henry Mitchell wrote that the goal of the garden is to be, not perfect, but wonderful, and I'm sure your garden is just that: wonderful. I doubt anyone on this forum has a perfect garden, but so many of us have ones that make us happy, and that's what matters. So many people have written about their health problems, the pain and limitations, and yet they keep on gardening somehow. I'm only struggling with tiredness these days and am full of respect for those of you who keep going under much greater difficulties. I agree gardening is good for mind and body. I have experience with living with more garden than I can maintain, and will offer a few strategies, if you can call them that, that have helped. In my climate at least, once-blooming old roses are easy to manage. They need occasionally to have old growth cut out, not every year, and even if you don't do that they grow and bloom just the same. The big ramblers and climbers have gotten so many and so huge that I'm not pruning them all every year, but am experimenting with a two year cycle. Also, roses differ in their pruning needs, so I'm trying to figure out what those needs are, and not prune any roses more than is strictly necessary. Some roses do need regular renewal pruning, for example Hybrid Musks, but others need much less. There are a lot of things I don't do in my garden. I don't fertilize, just dig good planting holes to start and then mulch, including leaving (disease-free) pruning clippings on the ground. I don't water after the first year, and this is with a regular summer drought. I don't protect from cold. I don't worry about small annual wild herbaceous plants, AKA weeds, in the beds, concentrating instead on nasty perennials like running grasses and some vicious clumping ones, and large ugly weeds. I try to grow plants that can live happily with these conditions, which means I don't have a lot of cultivated annuals or herbaceous perennials or many small plants, ones that are easily choked. I spray only for box moth, an exotic pest that arrived from Asia and which kills native box, a plant with a large presence in my garden, using Bacillus thuringensis which is employed in organic farming. Otherwise, as far as diseases and pests are concerned, everything is on its own. I have much respect for trees and large shrubs, particularly deciduous ones, because they provide cooling and protection from sun and wind in summer, deposit organic matter, tend to suppress weeds, and you can grow lots of interesting plants under them. My garden is untidy, rich, lush, rather wild-looking, comes to a stop in summer, when I don't care much to be outside anyway, has moments of great beauty and moments when it looks like an army passed through, and so far has survived every hardship that has come its way, including months of neglect on the part of its proprietress. We're doing okay. I agree that I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I couldn't garden. P.S. Thanks for starting this beautiful thread.