My Bursera shows signs of life. I'm thrilled. This is a desert shrub from extreme arid Mexico. It smells like turpentine.

They make spiffy bonsai if you can keep them alive. No, I have no idea why I'm growing it.

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Melissa - I forgot one - cerinthe (aka honeywort - related to borage). Mediterranean native, sort of tender perennial. I just got the blue one Cerinthe major purpuranscens, and also a yellow one. I like the blue one better - just because of the color and how it goes with roses. Both of them have taken off in full sun, and I'm told they seed themselves, which I am looking forward to. Do you have them there?

Jackie

tomatoes. cilantro. basil. stuff that likes sun. silly girl.

I'm really enjoying all these responses: thanks to all of you who have written in! Obsession is what gardening is all about, or at least I'm tempted to think so. Hoovb's Bursera is a perfect example (cool plant, by the way). Gardeners, and I not the least, will take on--let's say, less than obviously richly rewarding--projects and follow them with great interest. I have my cuttings I took in April and stuck in pots with plastic bags over them to keep in moisture. Every week I open the bags, check the cuttings, water them, and put the bags back over them. The native fly honeysuckle is gone, and the rose cuttings are mostly dead as well. The Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata' cuttings look like they're taking--last year's cuttings, uncovered, did so as well, but it was eleven months before they began putting out new leaves. The cuttings of the golden-leaved scorpion senna (Coronilla emerus, now named C. scorpioides, I believe) which I found growing on our property are putting out new leaves: hurrah! The mother plant is healthy and perfectly normal except for the foliage color, which is a valuable one in the garden; so I'm really hoping to be able to reproduce it. It's been a week since I checked the cutleaf lilac, another valuable garden plant that the last I saw looked like it was going to take. The fun is I have doing this is all out of proportion to the gain, though that counts too.
Terryjean, I'm really sorry about your roses, and hope that you'll find equal satisfaction growing your new garden. I can hardly imagine anything more painful in gardening than to have RRD show up and destroy your roses.
Jackie, I'll look up Cerinthe.
Melissa

Clematis and woodland plants. I must learn to grow clematis better, the large-flowered kinds. Viticellas and atragenes are no problem. I need clematis for all my once-flowering roses.

I must do something about the wood but not change it too much from its wild state. I have enough rhododendrons but they are so obviously non-native that I can't plant more of them among the bilberries. I am looking for more ferns and shade tolerant shrubs.

I'll take pics of my gardens and get them posted; it's too danged hot to venture out today. Heat advisory in effect with 110F heat index and 96F actuals. I won't even let the furballs outside. Just plain miserable. Welcome to summer, everyone.

hmmmm, obsessions......I can write the book. Yep, there have been many, some expensive (hybrid echinacea, hepaticas, paeonia) some terrible failures(same echinaceas, meconopsis, nomocharis), some fleeting (wildflower meadows) and some which habe been a constant joy (campanulas, alpines, small bulbs, species tulips). This year was a poppy year, having had a couple of austere years obsessing about foliage (grasses, ferns, conifers). I also had a white moment, spurred on by a current obsession (umbellifers) so the allotment is frothily whitely gloaming with a mass of orlaya, ammi, seselli, pimpinella, eryngoes, and, most fabulously, massive parsnips gone to seed).
I have already got my bulb order in, blowing the budget on white erythroniums and white martagon lilies (eye-watering, both costing more than half of the remainder of the entire order). I have added to my tulipa with the fantastically naned T.Vvedensky, more batalini and another 25 lady tulips(clusiana)As usual. the elusive T.sprengeri remains out of reach - even in my wildest greed, I cannot countenance paying the ludicrous price for these gorgeous tulips.....but, I do have one little plant, currently sneaking about in the lower branches of my acer, avoiding cats and other garden disasters while the seedhead gets fat and sere....I WILL have these tulips, even if it does take four years to grow from seed. Finally, I have ordered more blueberries (for the third time) - these are a difficult crop in dry and windy East Anglia but a life without challenges is a life half-lived. Do enjoy the mahonias, Melissa. I confess to quite a dislike for these but, at the dark end of the year, their fragrant yellow blossom is a delight. I fear another massive primula obsession, lurking in the wings, since the new garden has a specially added bed for anemones, hepaticas.....and just a few primulas! Oh, and if the hypatufa plans reach fruition, a whole new alpine catalogue beckons......

I'm obsessing over my veggie garden. Imagine! Actually growing plants that you can EAT!!! I wonder why I never thought of this before.

Suzy, I already knew obsession was your middle name. About the mahonias, I used to dislike them too. M. aquifolium is native to the Pacific Northwest where I used to live and landscapers overused it dreadfully, after which the property owners let it become ratty and full of weeds. Yuck. Here I have three patches of it, two in shade, one down in the sunny garden, where it grows well and turns a magnificent deep wine red in the fall--here where fall color is so hard to get--and it's a fine garden plant in all seasons. It's the same old story: very few garden plants are ugly in themselves, it's overuse and improper use and poor maintenance that makes people hate them. The Mahonia x media is such a striking plant--like a dinosaur--that it's hard to place, but if you find the right position for it, what a stunning creature it can be. DH bought two without notifying me and then planted them in our rustic hedge, where they stick out like dinosaurs, of course; and by the time I got around to moving them they were anchored like boulders and so stayed. They like the hedge. This is a common plant, but I don't think I've ever seen it displayed to fullest advantage. A challenge.
Think of me when your tulips bloom! The boars eat them all where I live.
Terryjean, I hope the weather moderates soon: that is just too hot. Do post photos when you can.
I finished checking my pots and my cuttings of 'Mme. Lambard' are putting out new growth!

Melissa,
try using little species tulips in pots - they are happy for years on end and after they have died down, you can just stash the pots somewhere and forget about them till next spring. I have several old wire hanging baskets I stick over them otherwise blackbirds rip them out. Yep, I know, not quite in the same league as boars but...... linifolia, humilis, batalini and, most gorgeous, albo-caerulea (sp?) look lovely in small terracotta pans and really appreciate a summer baking in dry soil. Mahonias - so right, they really do look prehistoric. One of my customers has one growing out of a circle of thuja, rising some 4m in the air with those great spiny leaves. It certainly makes a statement.
Ah yes, I forgot about eremurus - I also ordered several of the really tall robustus so I will bribe (bully or blackmail) one of my idle (but muscular) sons to dig out the massive acanthus taking over my gravel garden, thugging out a baby indigofera. The huge gap will be filled (I hope) by these stately (and weird) bulbs(thongs?). Also craving a romneya (Matilija Poppy) , planning a raid on the botanics and digging up a bit of root in the autumn (almost impossible to actually buy one). And, of course, I found my fingers moving of their own volition, like some creepy horror movie, until various rose nurseries appeared on screen (Trevor White, Peter beales....aaaaargh). This is an EXPENSIVE time of year. Melissa, your farm sounds blissfully bosky....i love these gardens where the rest of the world is constantly encroaching and in certain evening lights, nothing looks out of place, no matter how rampageous the weeds are and a general unruliness translates into sheer romaticism.

To-day I am mainly obsessing over my lotus flowers.
Would you believe that I have never, ever seen lotus flowers in the flesh before. I have only drooled over them in books, or on television, but this morning,---- my first flowers opened!
I ordered two different varieties back in the winter, (Nelumbo nucifera Mrs Perry Slocum and Momo Botan) and a flower of each opened this morning.
This is in spite of the fact, that the pond is still not finished!!

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Daisy

Melissa, I forgot to tell you. Your story about mahonias reminded me of when I was in my early twenties and living in Surrey.
To get from the town centre car park, into the shopping centre, one had to follow a footpath, that led up beside the local Woolworth.
There were raised brick planters in this footpath, all planted with what must have been Mahonia x media "Charity".
I always stopped to smell them, when they were in flower, and my daughter, who was a toddler at the time, insisted on being lifted out of her pushchair, to smell them too.
This was fine, until they stopped flowering.
My daughter would not accept that the flowers had gone, and all that summer and autumn, every time we went shopping, we had to stop beside the flower beds, unbuckle the safety harness and I had to lift her out of her pushchair to prove that there were no longer any flowers to smell.
Luckily, the following winter, there were plenty of flowers on them to smell, and afterwards, my daughter was old enough to understand seasonal flowering!
Daisy

Daisy, how wonderful to have a pond in a hot-climate garden. You say it's not finished but the flowers in the pond and I can't tell. Your husband is very talented!

Ingrid

Lilies! I just discovered two different sections in my gardens that would be dramatically highlighted if I had some 6-8 ft tall bulb lilies--I see a clump of in-your-face Silk Road lilies in that one spot that is too bland. And on the west side by the property line, how about a 7-8 ft tall clump of later-blooming red & gold Scheherazade lilies. And maybe a couple yellow trumpets.

Now where will I move the rose Well-Being to so that I can stick a clump of lilies in there? Hmmmmm.

My current lilies:
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Don't you love those big ones?

Kate

With our drought in Texas and no rain in sight, ornamental grasses is where it's at for me also - I just had a 70' flowerbed put in, plan to plant rambler roses to cover the chain link. Don't know what this combination will eventually look like but am fixing to find out. I NEVER was interested in cactus type plants, but am finding Agave quite interesting, too. Plan to plant Mexican Feather Grass and Deer Grass among others in swaths along with some Agaves, Vitex trees, etc., anything that will withstand our heat!

That Bursera which had almost nothing on 6/30 looks like this today. Wow that was quick!

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Those lillies are spectacular, as is Daisy's Lotus. What a beautiful pond!

You know I am enjoying all these gardener's obsessions vicariously. Please continue to obsess! :)

Having just returned from England and France my head is spinning with possibilities. There's an Aster (thompsonii) that blooms all summer. I saw Vitus coignetiae I (Crimson Glory Vine) used stunningly on a series of arches. What I'm really wanting is a Hoheria. This is a small tree/big shrub that I saw covered with white flowers. I went to a garden called Hinton Ampner where the focus of the collection is shrubs. I was very excited and inspired there. Tomorrow is the sale and open house at Digging Dog Nursery. It's only an hour away. I'll be there with my list, even though they don't grow Hoheria.

Gorgeous lotus, Daisy!

Yeah, I'm lovin my lilies right now too, Dublinbay!
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And the hydrangeas
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Congrats, Hoov! Nice leaves!

ogrose and mendocino rose--we need pics in the future to see the possibilities of unusual grasses and shrubs we've never heard of! Who knows--you two may revolutionize our rose beds!

seil--love those lilies--Asiatics? That first one is a most unusual color--love it. And yes, how could I have forgotten the hydrangeas. My Vanilla Strawberry and Pinky Winky are just starting to bloom for the first time in their lives--I'm eager to see them turn pinkish/reddish. Annabelle, of course, has been holding down things for the first half of the summer--2 Annabelles, in fact. Wish my mac looked as good as yours.

Kate

My Annabelle hydrangea picked up a pink sister just this week. She's called Bella Anna and has the same small mops of small flowers that Annabell does, but she's pink ! ! ! I'm quite excited to have her.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bella Anna

Yes, asiatics, Doublinbay. That first one is called Tango 4 You and is not quite peach and not quite buff colored. Very unusual. I don't seem to have the tag for the pink one but I think I got it at the dollar store!

All three of my hydrangeas were Mother's Day gifts to my Mom from many many years ago. Mom always planted them even though everyone said they'd never make it and to toss them out. You can see they're doing just fine!

Hey, I promise to post pictures as soon as we get the new computer my husband keeps promising and loads the software! He gave me a neat canon digital camera for my birthday last year that will work with the lenses that I had before (back in the dark ages) -am taking pictures as this is happening, but nothing much now until Fall - it's just too dang hot!! I've ordered a couple of Agave among other drought resistant plants; in the fall my son will take me to a wholesale nursery to pick out the native grasses I want to try - can hardly wait to see how this finally works out, but in the meantime I'm just trying to keep up with the watering.

Love that Bella Anna.

Keep on watering, everyone. Sooner or later it will start to cool off (I hope)-- : )

Kate

Suzy, just to tease you, I have lots of white martagon lilies from pieces of bulbs a friend gave me. He paid a lot for them, I didn't. But I don't have any white erythroniums and have looked for them everywhere. I like the yellows but the whites would be perfect in one of my woodland borders. The pink martagons are a weed here, I cannot possible count their numbers. The lily beetles love them, too.

We've had a summer of no rain so I'm already looking forward to the late autumn plants of which I have too few. Some plants I've always considered fall plants are already in flower. I don' t like global warming or whatever phenomenon we are experiencing.

Right now, it's Russian tomatoes and dwarf hydrangea. Later, it will be hellebore, double primroses, and whatever else I decide to wintersow.

My newest obsession are Hydrangeas. Why? Because when I came home from a two week vacation in England in the third week of June the prettiest plant was my 'Endless Summer' hydrangea, besides all the roses of course ;-)! One really nice thing about that hydrangea is that is actually re-blooming on new wood.

I have two spots in the backyard that would be suited for an hydrangea. So I tried to get another 'Endless Summer' hydrangea, but in my local nurseries they were either sold out or looked really crappy and were on top of that very expensive :-(. Luckily I found 'Penny Mac', which is also a repeat blooming one and 'Nikko Blue', which is a once bloomer but came in a very lovely shade of blue.

Reading this thread my next obsession could be lillies!

Here is a link that might be useful: Organic Garden Dreams

Here in the high desert, the roses are thriving and I've been obsessing about the "fillers". Lavenders have been good in the right places, although I've been infatuated with Walker's Low Nepeta for a trouble-free plant with lots of blue flowers. Then the usual suspects: Gaillardia, Coreopsis, Coneflowers, Snow-in-summer. Plopped a Gypsophilia in among some roses - I've had some success with this in the past. We'll see. That's the joy of all this - planning, planting, caring, and - with hands on hips and perhaps a glass of wine - eyeballing what you've wrought over time.

The tomatoes, Beefsteak, Ramapo, Sweet 100, a purple (not Cherokee Purple) that I started from seed, and the volunteer that somehow ended up in the pot with my new Nicole Carol Miller. Also the volunteer arugula that has popped up in the oddest places (rose pots, rose bed, rose pot across the driveway, crack in the sidewalk). Oh, and the return of what I thought was a long-dead oregano.

I picked my first ripe tomato last week! I always get the 4th of July tomatoes because they really do ripen by then. None of those 70/80 days tomatoes for me. I can't wait that long!
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Marianese,
For white Erythronum check out Brent and Becky's Bulbs. They used to own the Daffodil Mart (sold it to some large nursery - don't remember which) and are a third generation bulb nursery. Also try McClure and Zimmerman. They also were bought up but I have used them since and they still seem OK. One or both have white Erythronum. I just can't remember which.

Cath

Mariannese,
At least one European nursery also carries white Erythronium. Just google Rareplants.UK. I have not ordered from them because CERTS certiicates are required to import the plants I wanted into the US which can be costly and hard on the plants. Rareplants has many interesting plants and a good reputation and if my life slows down enough to let me catch up, I may yet try it.

Cath

Spigelia Marilandica fell in love with it this Spring and can't wait till next spring when it blooms next

Here is a link that might be useful: Spigelia

I'm loving Royal Candles Veronica - it blooms all summer long and builds into a nice mound after the first year, This picture is of two that I put in last summer. I love how the blue contrasts with William Shakespeare 2000 and Aloha Hawaii. Blue seems to go with everything in a garden, doesn't it
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I don't think I'm obsessed with any plant right now but am enjoying whatever is in bloom. Right now Stargazer lilies look great blooming beside Maggie, along with some Russian sage. I am happy with impatiens which self sow on my shady side along with corydalis. I like the corydalis but it self sows so rampantly that I've been ripping it out in fear of it taking over my whole garden. I have another invasive plant I like a lot, a hardy alstroemeria with red and green blooms. Tall phlox in several colors are adding clouds of color but it too spreads more than I want it to. I have a few tomato plants . Love the pictures of Veronica, lilies, and lotus. Lotus flowers have a magical luminous quality to me. I just received a box of many varieties of bearded iris and some allium bulbs.

Love your Veronica Karen!

Me too. Those Veronica are gorgeous. And the Lillies too.

Organicgardendreams, hydrangea cuttings (only the non-patented ones of course) are very easy to root. You can also pin a stem to the ground and it will root that way. They are much easier to root than roses.

Thank you Cath! I will search for the white dog's tooth violets.

In previous years, I have hankered after and bought Fruit Trees, Daffodills, Tulips, Ranuculas, Clematis, Iries, Camillias, Pansies etc. Also may years ago, Asters and Carnations, which I found very good, but they were in a previous garden and I haven't got around to buying them again yet as I have been doing the roses too much.
I am only buying roses this year, so far anyway.

Glad you like the Veronicas! I took those pictures in the early evening, so the light wouldn't wash them out, but used no photo enhancements - that's the true colors of the Veronicas and the roses. I think I'll get some more 'Royal Candles' and tuck them around the garden wherever a burst of blue would help. This is my first year for the climber Aloha Hawaii (in the one Veronica picture) and its colors absolutely glow. Sure hope it is good an hardy, 'cause I could really love that rose long term.

What - no one else is obsession over Dahlias?!!!

Last year I had planted a handful of the little 6 pack dwarf mix dahlias. Each came back in my 9b climate, and are now all over 1' x 1', and look lovely between and around my roses. Also at end of last year, I found some scraggly purple Dinner Plate Dahlias on Lowes $1 rack.

They also came back this year, and are about 3' x 3' with blooms as big as 6". Being a great scavenger I found some mostly dead looking white and yellow dinner plates as well as a yellow cactus dahlia at Armstrong Nursery. I asked if they'd discount them as they looked so bad, and I got them for almost nothing. 3 weeks in the ground, and all are covered with blooms, with one white bloom over 7". They are STUNNING, and look awesome in a vase with roses.

So - I bought a few different varieties of Mystics, and am about to finally start learning more about them, and adding many varieties to my garden. They are super easy to grow - just like lots of water, and love my sandy soil and lots of sun.

There seems to be a variety with every color and visual size and shape you can imagine.

Melissa,

I have been puzzling over this. Why can't you grow Magnolias? Maybe if you grew Magnolia grandiflora in the shade and watered it a couple of years during your drought it would grow. Eventually it should have a huge root system which might make it through your dry period. I have one on a hill in clay - not much organic top soil there! Mine is 'Edith Bogue'.

Cath

Cath,
Magnolia grandiflora is one of the more tolerant magnolias, and is certainly a magnificent tree, but I'm not interested in it. I long for the deciduous, mostly Asian magnolias: M. stellata, M. denudata, the Soulangeanas, the x loubneri group, the yellow-flowered hybrids of M. acuminata. Actually, I plan on getting a Loebneri magnolia: I think I actually have a place, one spot in our thirty-three acres, where it will grow.
Magnolias are fairly common ornamental trees down in the Po Plain below our hills, and in our local town, which is located in a valley and has good alluvial soils. It's five miles away and about 225 meters lower than we are, and they can grow plants that we can't. Conditions vary. It's not that I haven't tried magnolias, but much of the soil in the big garden bears a close resemblance to adobe brick when it's dry, and they just can't handle it. The shade garden either has dry unfriendly soil, or it floods, and I don't think magnolias like to be flooded either (roses on the other hand can handle tremendous amounts of winter water). Also much of the shade garden is shady, of course. But I do have one spot I think will work, and I'm looking forward to getting the right magnolia, and then seeing it in splendor in a few years. They are magnificent, glorious trees. Otherwise I may get a pear for one spot where I want a flowering tree. That may not sound obvious, but pears have a heavy noble structure and a massive whiteness to their bloom that makes them, in my eyes, the hill country aesthetic equivalent of flowering magnolias.
harmonyp (Beth?)
I think you're right about dahlias. I got rid of my numerous family of them a few years ago after a very long drought because I didn't want to water them; and I got tired of lifting the tubers and keeping them in my mud room through the winter, then replanting them, and staking them. Right now the garden has just three or four survivors that have made it through two unusually cold and wet winters without rotting. I have a handsome pink one growing in the cottage bed next to the house where it flourishes in clay and with little supplementary water.
Dahlias come in a great variety of forms and colors, many of them very beautiful: rich burgundies, violets, soft oranges, waterlily pinks. They're undemanding about water and soil. They don't get any pests or diseases to speak of. They make excellent cut flowers. One of the things I liked about dahlias when I was growing them in quantity is how they're movable foliage, excellent for filling in gaps when the shrubs are young; and they have big, bold, flourishing dark leaves with never a trace of mildew. They bloom when much of the garden is quiescent too.
Now I'm wondering why on earth I don't have more dahlias. I don't quite trust them to be tough enough to thrive out in the big garden, where life is a battle: they're more suitable to the vegetable patch, and I have very little of that kind of space. Perhaps one year I'll be able to conjure up some room for dahlias. They are wonderful flowers.
Melissa

I tried obsessing over dahlias for several seasons, I really did. I loved them, but they surely didn't love me back. A particular favorite was Mystic Desire -- gorgeous chocolate black foliage and riveting orange flowers -- except that by August that foliage was, um, grey. Ghastly mildew. Harmonyp and Melissa, how do you keep yours mildew free?

Kay

I love the look of dahlias, but here in the North they have to be dug up and stored, and then started in pots early if they are to bloom before fall frost, so I finally gave up - too much work here for me. But they are lovely. Sometimes I buy potted ones and just enjoy them for one season.

OK, well now the glads are blooming and they're my favorite!
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seil, gladiolus are blooming all over the place here too. They're another plant that's a little too tender for me to leave in the ground, and being the minimalist gardener that I am I don't grow them, though we have a blazing scarlet one in the propagating bed that my husband came home with once and that has survived several bad winters. Gladiolus are a little too dramatic, in a frilly way, for my garden style, but they certainly make themselves noticed. We have a native gladiolus of brilliant magenta, with smaller flowers than the cultivated kinds, and there's quite a bit of it in the garden, always a welcome sight when it blooms.
Kay, in a word, I don't know. I guess dahlias just like our climate. What the favorable conditions are, though, I can't say. I seem to recall that dahlias did well in western Washington as well.
Melissa

It's weird, Melissa, sometimes they come back and sometimes they don't. Once in a while I dig them out in the fall if there's one I particularly liked. But I bought this years batch at the dollar store so I probably won't bother and just wait and see what, if any, come back. It was a mixed bag of bulbs and so far, except for that one orange one, all the rest are white.

My hibiscus are blooming now too!
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Black Knight Buddleja - I love the deep, rich color of the blooms, the honey fragrance, and informal country hedge look of the form and foliage. I can't wait for the babies I just bought to grow up, fill out and re-seed. I'd also like some black hollyhocks and scabiosa which I think will contrast well with sugar pink roses like Duchesse de Brabant and lacy sweet allysum. Others I'd like scads of are dahlias and daylilies. And also peony poppies - not a substitue for the lush peonies my grandmother had - but tolerant of a dry climate

As we drag into August with day 35 of over 100, yesterday 110 today 111, NO rain, I look at my garden - the only things that don't look absolutely devastated are the old roses and the ornamental grasses I have. They're LOVING the heat, the grasses are starting to get their blooms and look just as fresh as can be. By the time this is over I am going to have a very weird looking landscape, just roses and grasses, lol! I do have some other toughies, but these two are amazing to me.

I'm having fun with my year old boxwood chicken-sitting-on-a-nest topiary. I'm waiting for one end to get taller so I can shape a head onto it. Right now, the head and tail are the same size! She's penned in by a lavender fence and has some lime fizz santolina babies. Maybe next year she'll get a head!

Betty (hi, Laura!!) is directly behind her with Portland from Glendora to the right. Maybe next year the roses will be big enough to give the chicken-pen garden a rosy background.

I'm also in love with lilies, the big white Casa Blanca are about to bloom, and the white foxgloves are blooming now. I have a long standing love affair with white sweet alyssum and am developing a serious addiction to rocket snapdragons. My larkspur didn't come up this year; not sure what I did wrong this time, but I'll try again next year. I seriously love larkspur.

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