In my area, the blooms of Rozanne Geranium turn to pink in the summer heat. On the other hand, it is very long blooming, virtually all summer. It does sprawl, but I give it a snip here and a snip there (not all at once) as the summer goes by and that helps keep it neat. Kalimeris, Blue Star is a wonderful front of the border plant. I would call its blooms pale lavender, but it works well in my yellow and blue border. It has nice foliage, stays low and neat, and blooms nearly all summer. For salvias, I recommend Salvia farinacea, Victoria. Of all the "blues" that I grow, this one is at the top of the heap. It is unfailingly neat, even the spent blooms. It blooms continually from spring to frost. It is deer resistant! And, I love the spires that it provides in a sea of mounds. It is not reliably perennial, but is very easy to start from cuttings or seed. I grow Peachies Pick and I love it. The foliage is absolutely neat, is evergreen, and does not sprawl. They are very similar to the look you would get with a pulmonaria, which, of course, needs shade. The flowers are a true sky blue. They will repeat some with dead heading. This plant is so dramatically different from other stokesias I have grown, it's hard to believe they're from the same family. I have also grown May Night salvia. It is a lovely plant, but only blooms in the spring. After about three years, it declined and died. Salvia Victoria is far far superior. I am going to need to check out Blue Ice. I have the larger Amsonia taberaemontana, and it's one of my favorite blue perennials.

I finally made it out to Cicconi's and it was only a half hour drive from my father's in Colts Neck. I spent 3 hours wandering greenhouses and kept forgetting where I'd left my cart. I had 3 things I needed from their availability list but ended up with more than 3 plants! In one of the back houses was where I found the Hakone Beni Kaze grass whose internet photo grabbed me but the mail order prices for a 3-5 inch pot didn't. It's still a visible plug inside the quart but I'm leaving it in the container sunk in the garden to grow on and baby for the next year. I'm hoping I have it good light condition to achieve the burgundy, red & pink coloration in Fall but with enough shade so it doesn't shrivel up. Cicconi's prices for gallon perennials were almost on par with some other places but they had a great selection and people were extremely patient and helpful. The prices for good size plants compared to mail order, tops-lopped-off little starters were great and you get to actually see a plant in its natural state when you buy and growing the first year. Got more Asclepias Incarnata (they were out of Tuberosa-the Monarchs will have to deal with it), NY Ironweed, Heuchera Amethyst Mist, Pink Jewel Fleabane (after I saw a Spring Azure testing the nectar right in front of me), a huge Sedum Vera Jameson (funky succulent, not like its photos but a facinating stunner) and some Sweet Basil since my little seedlings won't be "Pesto sufficient" for a LONG time. The 2 Lamium Purple Dragon I got from Gasko's are fading quickly without growth or flowers while another $3. Lamium 3 times their size I got at a roadside plant seller on northbound side of Rt. 35 (south of the light at Costco in Hazlet) is flourishing and blooming its head off. I always saw this roadside place too late in zipping traffic to stop in but was keeping an eye out for it last trip up that way to Lowe's & Dearborn. I also got a Eupatorium Rugosum Chocolate (terrific burgundy tinged foliage & can't wait for fall white blooms), Buddleia Red Knight (in huge shrub pot since nowhere really to put 5'x5' plant in full sun), Salvia May Night, unknown electric blue/purple Salvia, Curly Parsley for Swallowtails and a few six packs of annuals for mostly shaded garden. Total only $36. for all that and they're doing very well. I didn't have to make a stop at Dearborn for anything and they wouldn't have any plants I got at roadside plant seller anyway except for Salvia May Night most likely. Early Saturday morning before food shopping I stopped in at Colonial Nursery on West Front Street just east of Middletown-Lincroft Rd. in Middletown. I never knew they existed until finding them listed as retail vendor for some national supplier. They had 2 year old Dwarf Goatsbeard for $9.95 that was 3 times the size of mail order gallon I got last fall and more than a foot tall/wide Astilbe Fanal that was a nicer shade of burgundy/raspberry than I perceived from online photos. It's not a huge place buy neat and clean with a good selection of plants not everyone carries in such pristine shape. The Fanal looked washed out and rangy at Cicconi's and price was the same. Next year I'll have to make it out to Cicconi's earlier in the season to look around when things haven't gone through a withering heat wave. I probably don't "need" much more to fill in what I can at my father's but there's always a chance I'll see some perennial between now and next year for which I could find a place to plant. Used quite a few annuals to fill in where I was too confused or rushed to decide on perennials to fill out a few new beds. Particularly short on spring bloomers. Maybe next year after a full year in the ground I'll have more time to enjoy all these beauties when I don't have to baby them until they get established. I was never so happy to hear thunder and lightening as last night thinking "Yippee...I don't have to worry about watering at 5 AM" expecially before getting started on cooking/straightening house for Father's Day celebration. All in all, I've maxed out on plants for my first year's attempt at gardening. I dread having to transplant the last few containers of annual seedlings I started myself. What was I thinking listening to people who said "It's a snap!" compared to being stretched out on the ground trying to tease apart tiny roots and then getting them placed just right in ground soil...to say nothing of watering with droplets so they don't dissolve into the ground? What a riot but good learning experience. Boy, do I feel lucky to live in Jersey!

Hi Zach, I don’t know what you’ll think of this, but the first thing that came to mind when you asked for something to replace the Zauschneria is the perennial four O’clock, Mirabilis multiflora! Low and spreading, very similar to the way Callirhoe is “viney” and covers a large area without actually rooting in as it spreads. What’s the grass you have in that little rocked in area? If it’s a real short one the Mirabilis could possibly run it right over! If it’s taller, no problem I think! Here’s a thread I started a looong time ago asking for info and advice about it when I got one and found contradictory info! I still don’t have one (that lived!), but it’s still on my Must Have One Day list! As you can see on this thread, some people say it can spread up to 6’ or more! Because of the nature of the plant, I believe you could just trim the individual stems to shorten them if it started going Too Far! http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2129011/information-on-perennial-four-oclock-mirabilis-multiflora?n=21 Some places say it can be invasive, but I haven’t found any Colorado folks saying that! And I think it’s pretty enough to want to try it anyway! (Kind of like I did with the Z-Word!!!) I do believe it reseeds some—but I don’t believe it’s enough to be a nuisance! At the bottom of that thread Jali posted a couple pics of hers while they were still pretty small. Jali, if you see this, how are yours doing??? [Or did you move out of that house???] If Kiddo likes ‘Dragon’s Blood’, how about some other sedums for him? I can bring starts at the next swap—cuttings he can start for himself, for a real sense of accomplishment! Let me know which ones you already have! AND! How about some semps??? There is SO much variety in the size, shape, and color of these things that I am constantly amazed when I see new ones! I have a small yard so I just keep a “small patch” of all the different ones—I must have at least a couple dozen different ones by now! Can also bring “chicks” for some different varieties that he can start himself! [Instruction sheets for rooting sedums and starting hen & chicks included when I bring unrooted ones!] And then there’s the iceplants! Not sure if you have any of those yet or not! Some of the older varieties can get pretty straggly looking, and have a way of suddenly dying off big time, but the newer ones, Delosperma basuticum ‘White Nugget’ and ‘Gold Nugget’ spread slowly, stay nice and compact, and grow very densely. I give ‘White Nugget’ away at swaps—and will be giving ‘Gold Nugget’ (under a different name!) away probably by next year. Here are links to some olde threads where I posted real live pics of these things! Hen & chicks on this one! These are just a few of the first varieties I started at this house! http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2135209/hen-and-chicks-addiction?n=14 A “groundcover” thread, so more than just sedums, but a lot of sedum pics too—with ‘White Nugget’ right up on top! Don’t miss the sedum pics down near the bottom of the thread! Show them to Kiddo and see what he thinks of them! (When I was a kid and found out there were ALL kinds of sedums, I got REALLY interested in them!) http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2129058/need-help-selecting-a-groundcover-plant?n=16 And a few more sedum and iceplant pics—some of these could be the same as on the first thread! I love the way the sedums and the hen & chicks “change color” in winter and spring! Also, since the semps and iceplants, and almost all of the sedums are evergreen, it keeps “something” out there to look at over winter when most of the perennials “go away!” Even with my one deciduous sedum, if I get it cut back early enough it starts to grow the “rosettes” for the next year, and they’re out there all winter too! http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2130716/groundcover-advice?n=10 It seems to me that little patches of different sedums/semps/iceplants would look really good here and there in your garden—and Kiddo could have his very own things to take care of! [I LOVE to get kids interested in gardening!] I don’t know if this makes any difference to you, but I don’t like to “walk all over the soil” in my perennial beds, so as soon as I started putting things in I “installed” some small pieces of flagstone for “stepping stones.” I can reach almost everything from one of the stepping stones, and that way I’m “standing in the same place” whenever I’m working out there, and not trampling the soil down all over the place. And since I have “rocks” here, there, and everywhere (many of which—the smaller ones!—I’ve collected when I was out trippin’!), the flagstone blends right in with the “overall look” of it! Your bed is large enough that you could kind of put a couple little “paths” through it—with the stepping stones spaced fairly far apart! If you go down to the “whole garden” pic near the bottom of the second linked semp/sedum thread, between the “bonsai’d honeysuckle bush” and the hydrangea, you can see the little pieces of flagstone here and there in that bed! (No “small” rocks in that pic! It was taken in ’08, the year I started Trippin’ In Earnest! There are LOTS of “rocks” out there now, and in the last couple years I’ve started working on collecting Rocky Mountain Driftwood!) I’m not sure about this, but I don’t think the squirrels will do much damage to the Helianthus! The stems, unlike annual sunflowers, are very thin, and I don’t think they could climb up enough to get to the flowers! But if they do try, they just might “drag” the whole top of the plant down! DUH! Just thought of this! NO squirrel problems! H. m. seed is small—closer to Echinacea seed! Completely different from the annual sunflowers! Do you have a blue fescue? The center of mine—‘Elijah’s Blue’, the “best” one IMO—has completely died out and I’m gonna need to dig, divide, and replant it, and will very possibly have some starts at one of the next couple swaps! Just don’t know when I’ll get it done! Aren’t there “codes” in whatever city you live in that allow you to get The House taken care of so it’s not a Public Nuisance? When you said it was empty I assumed it had been foreclosed—like the Weed Lot Public Nuisance right behind me—which is lived in again—but is STILL a WEED LOT Public Nuisance. I haven’t called Code Enforcement again since the “new folks” moved in, but my whole lot is an insane maze, now, of every kind of milkweed you can imagine—and a bunch more I never even knew existed! If they let it get over the limit (I think it was 8” high) next spring again, I AM gonna call Code Enforcement back—even with them living there now! Broken windows, wildlife living in the building, plants growing into the building!!! That all sounds like stuff that would be prohibited by city codes—almost anywhere! You should go to your city’s site and check it out. I found the info I needed pretty easily on the Thornton site! Gotta go, Skybird P.S. I’ve talked to Barb about the possibility of going to Rocky Mountain Arsenal for a bird watching expedition with you some day (idea originally from the bird thread!) and maybe if we do that we’ll just invite ourselves down to your house for a weenie roast and garden tour after the bird watching!

I just bought a Button Bush. It seems to be happy for now. I worry when I buy plants late in the year. Despite that I keep watering until they ground freezes, I always have a 50/50 chance of survival. I did move the two little New Jersey Tea plants I got online and now they lost their leaves. I'm worried I just killed them. I purchased them from Niche Gardens along with three other plants, one didn't make it through the summer. The others are doing great. I just hope the loss of leaves happened because I moved the plants, not because I killed them.