strawberryhill, what a lovely group of pictures, the first one definitely enhanced by the non-floral little cutie. It's always nice to see plantings from other zones like the lovely snapdragons that would faint here but look so pretty in your garden.

I live in a heat trap with surrounding hills and hot boulders, so very few things do well over the long haul. Daylilies, pelargoniums and repeat blooming irises are my mainstays (one is blooming now) along with crape myrtles and butterfly bushes. I've tried many other more interesting plants but none have the staying power I'd like. Oh yes, marjoram turns into giant, long-flowering bushes that the bees go mad over and is so easy-care. Belinda's Dream, tea roses and the small Bourbons do best here, along with a few of the Austins, as far as roses are concerned.

Ingrid

Hi Ingrid: Talk about climate suitability - the ones you mentioned are utter failures here: I lost over $100 worth of repeat-blooming irises during last spring's flash floods. I once drove 1 hour to a nursery to spend $40 on two huge butterfly bushes - but lost them to our zone 5a winter. We have fragrant lilacs in the spring - but how I love to have the fragrant crape myrtles you mentined. Roses are the only way I can get fragrant in the summer here.

Thank you, Ingrid, for your previous tip on making a "crown of thorns". I use Radio Time's thorny branches to protect my mini-roses from chipmunks' attack.

I have 4 little baby lilacs that we are tending, 2 in the ground and a pair of back ups in pots. I really hope they make it, they came from a lady a couple of miles away who dug them out of her lawn from the mother plant.

Unfortunately all of our iris's are once bloomers and the basic ones, but they do stand up to chickens! Our belladonna lilies (naked ladies) are busy popping up their pink or white flowers all around. Things like the cala lily die back in the heat and dry, but will be back in the fall.

I love the lavenders with the roses. Our snap dragons reseed pretty well, this years .99 cent 6 packs are 50/50 fried or alive. And the columbines are still blooming.

Great garden pics, Strawberryhill, your daughter must have so much fun in the garden with all the interesting plants to see.

Snapdragons are really nice to grow, I like the colors and bloom shape.

Alyssum is a great companion for the roses, I need to buy some next year...

Very Nice!
I have quite a few Cardinal Lobelia's Blue Red & a coral pink they are good fro late July Blooms through early Aaugust, lots of red salvia & Jolly bee, Orion & Roseann geraniums, Sweet Pea's have been going all Summer. I like to plant Browallia in between the geraniums it's blooming constantly when they aren't, a few Helenium's also for late summer color Rubinzweg is a nice combo with red Salvia backed up by a dwarf goldenrod.

Hi Kippy: I once read in a rose book that Columbines are spider-magnets like Marigolds. I love lavenders too. I have one clump and looked all over for more, but could not buy more. I will root my existing lavender clump through soil layering.

Here is my list of Roses that I enjoy tremendously: no spray, no diseases, no pruning, great scents. These roses look great as landscape bush (no octopus canes), and look good in a vase. Let's start from the bottom upward to the best:

1) Queen of Sweden: this is among the few Austins that don't throw octopus canes. The flower is exquisite, leaves are cute, 100% health, and upright shape, low-thorn. Contrary to what Austin catalog says, this makes a lousy cut flower, shatters in one day. The scent is better than Scepter'd Isle.

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2) Francis Blaise: This Guillot rose is always blooming like Queen of Sweden. The bloom is huge, with many petals and it doesn't shrink in size like Austins. It has great green-apple floral scent, very refreshing. Vase life is 4 to 5 days. Petals are firm and stand up to 90-100 degrees heat, color doesn't fade either.

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3) Sonia Rykiel - her bloom is majestic, the scent is amazing. My kid came home hungry fromm school, and said, "It smells so good, I want to eat it." It demands constant water, but doesn't throw octopus canes like Austins. The bush is pretty and compact. Like Francis Blaise, the bloom doesn't become less petals like Hybrid Teas, and color doesn't fade in hot sun. Vase life is 4 days in hot weather, 6 days in cool weather.

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4) Versigny - The bloom is incredibly beautiful, still pretty after 5 days in the vase. The scent is better than Evelyn, and way-better than Liv Tyler. It smells like a floral peach pie.

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5) Liv Tyler - The bush is compact and upright. The bloom is HUGE, nice salmon color, stays big with many petals in hot summer. The scent is delicious at first, but after 5 days in the vase it smells like ripe apricots.

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6) Deep Purple floribunda - this is almost thornless. Blooms last 10 days on the bush, and 5 days in the vase. Bush is compact with dark green glossy leaves. The bloom doesn't become less petals in the heat like other hybrid teas.

7) Baysyes Blueberry - Great wild rose scent, 100% thornless. This one gave Kim Rupert's Joyberry its famous scent that Paul Barden raved about.

8) Bolero floribunda - I like this one even more than Liv Tyler, always blooming, great bush-shape, glossy leaves, smells like an expensive perfume. Below is a pic. of Bolero floribunda:

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9) 2007 Sweet Promise Hybrid Tea - This has 4 or 5 thorns at the bottom, the rest is 100% thornless and smooth. The bloom is HUGE, color doesn't fade in the sun. The scent is AWESOME, like apple blossoms in the spring. It blooms like a shrub on steroids, at least 19 buds/bloom per flush. Below is Sweet Promise in the center, Golden Celebration upper left, Honey Bouquet lower left, and the rest are Austins whose blooms shrink in the heat. The bush has reddish young leaves and similar in shape like Firefighter (another HT that I enjoy, although Firefighter becomes less petals the heat).

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10) This got to be the most perfect rose and the best fragrance ever bred: Kim Rupert's Annie Laurie McDowell. At first I thought my spring frost stunted Annie, but recent experiment giving her organic acid fertilizer high in nitrogen, ULTRAGREEN NPK of 10-5-4 bought from Lowe's, made Annie grow like crazy. My mistake was giving her only alfalfa meal for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd flush, with my having to debud her 15+ booms per flush constantly. Annie flowers at the expense of growth, so giving her fertilizer high in nitrogen (chicken manure) forced her to grow new wood and leaves.

She leads the pack in the hall of scent. Ralph Moore bred her parents, and Kim Rupert perfected her. My fragrant ones here: Comte de Chambord, Jacques Cartier, Bolero, Frederic Mistral, Mirandy, Crimson glory, Sonia Rykiel, Firefighter, Nahema, and 15 Austins .... fall short of Annie in the intensity and duration of her lilac and lavender scent. Annie is drought tolerant in 100 degrees heat, 100% smooth and thornless, with healthy exotic leaves.

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Strawberry, I don't see extra spiders in the columbines, but spiders are good garden pesticides

Not that I enjoy them on the house...

Strawberryhill, fabulous blooms, great colors. Thank you for the garden tour.

I love the shade of your alyssum, is it an annual?

Many! I love quite a number of plants besides roses. Lilacs would be my favorite non-rose, non-fruiting shrub.

In the past few years, though, trees have grown more and more appealing to me. My father loved trees, so perhaps I get it from him.

Rosefolly

The roses and garden look beautiful, Strawberryhill! Great photo of your daughter, too. This heat has the flowers on all the roses fried, as I'm sure we're all feeling, too. What's really satisfying me around here these days are the leucophyllum, caesalpinia, salvia, bougainvillea, euphorbia, calliandra, grevillea and lantana. They require a fraction of the water anything else does; nothing eats them; no diseases and the hotter it gets, the more they flower! Kim

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Pookah is about the only rose continuing to pump out the bloom and still look decent.
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Some things we grow and love . . .

We also like Plumerias (tho we don't have enough heat for all of them) and lavenders (particularly dwarf ones), and salvias of all sorts.

Jeri

Strawberry your alyssums smell..? Mine don't :-( and I have 20 something of them...

Hi Jessica: I love your picture! I like how you capture the sun ray. The purple alyssum smelled great in the acidic peat-moss tray at Walmart, but once planted in my alkaline clay soil I can only catch a wafting scent in the morning. Many of my roses lose their scent, until I give them sulfur, then they regain their scents. William Shakespeare smelled really bad in my soil, until I gave him acid, then his scent is more bearable - blooms become more red to my liking. Hi Jlee 160: Alyssum is an annual in zone 5a, but for $3 they spread 10 times their size and become a ground cover.

Hi Kippy: My mistake, I meant to type spider-mites magnets, but I skipped the "mites" in a hurry. That's why I banned marigolds from my garden, although they love my clay soil. Thank you, Kim and Jeri for great pics. of plants and roses that I can't grow, but I enjoy seeing them.

Rosefolly, about trees I regret planting 26 trees when our house was first built. They are BIGGER WATERHOGS than roses. In 2004 drought, I spent $300 per month just to keep my trees alive. My neighbor planted only 2 poplar trees, but he paid over $500 to chop them down during our mini-drought this spring. I already have a dead birch tree this year. My sister paid over $500 for a large tree to be chopped down, so did another neighbor. At least roses don't cost any money to be removed.

Trees attract spuirrels, biggest pest on earth. They were chewing on the roof's edge in my last house, despite being surrounded by at least 10 large trees.

Strawberry thanks I just ran outside and snapped a photo because I couldn't find one on my computer of them when I was typing the post lol

strawberryhill, lovely pictures and very informative post. I'm so glad the circle of thorns idea is working for you. Not the most glamorous look but better than dead roses. I find on my regular-sized roses I can remove the canes when the roses have attained some size. For some reason the rodents pretty well leave the roses alone when they've matured and gained some height. They must not be as yummy!

I'm thinking I must have Sweet Promise although I don't otherwise grow modern hybrid teas. I have Annie Laurie McDonnell on the waiting list at Burlington for spring; am even more anxious to have it now!

Thanks for the great pictures, all.

Ingrid

Beautiful photos, everyone!

40" of rain a year. I'm trying to imagine how wonderful that must be.

Ah, the rain is not so wonderful when it is washing your garden away. However, I am not complaining (too much) because the extra rain has made my allotment remarkably green and lush. At this time of year, in dry east anglia, there can be a bit of a lull until all the late summer flowers (asters, heleniums, rudbeckias, phlox, come on song but this year, I have been thrilled by ther conjunction of thalictrums and roses - the lovely foliage and dainty flowers are still floating about the shrubbery. Campanulas, the tall types such as Lactiflora and persicifolia are still shining out while penstemons have been going on for months (on about the 4th or 5th lot of dead-heading. The vegetables, which normally descend into weedy chaos are astonishingly green - squash and sweetcorn look quite iridescent between rose plantings and rampaging under all, are many hardy geraniums (my standby flower for tricky spots and ground filling). Most lovely of all, to my mind, is a huge specimen clump of stipa gigantea hovering over the early yellow roses - not now blooming but looking green and light filled, especially since the evening sun shines through the stipa looking like a shower of golden rain. Gaura is another great and airy plant (my tastes run to tall ramping perennials which do not clump or mound, but sway and fall over) while euphorbia wulfenii looks stately and grand. Waiting for the deep blue plumbago and the asters to start the late summer display.
Rudbeckias over my head this year - 8 foot tall! Truly. Best ever year for my 'prairie'.
Strawbs, that's a lot of lawn you can eventually reclaim (and you will) for all those roses you have yet to meet.

More stuff that grows well here ...

"Staghorn Ferns" (which are not actually ferns)

And epiphytic plants like Selenecereus grandiflorus (probable ID). This one was collected from a monster, growing up a HUGE Chinese Elm, at an old farmhouse, down the hill. Tree and mother plant are both gone now, but plants of this reside in a few local gardens.

Our neighbor's bloomed last year. Ours have not, so far. The blooms last a night, but they're as big as generous dinnerplates, and moonlight-white.

Jeri

I love Camp's poetic description of her garden. I can't wait to see pics of Camp's garden. Yes, my hubby is falling in love with my roses. It's he who took Paul Neyron off the cement patio in 100 degrees heat, and moved Paul to partial shade, where he thrives. My hubby could not stand his favorite pet, "Mr. Chipmunk" eating my mini-roses that he put these minis in pots on top of his grill. It's quite tacky, so I had to put chicken wire around my pots, which is even tackier. My neighbor trap the chipmunks, drive for one block, then release them. There are thousands of Chipmunks, Bunnies, and Squirrels EXCHANGE PROGRAM going on across the nation - which help them to "date" long-distance and mutiply many times.

Hi Jeri: that "Queen of the Night" tree is very exotic. Thanks or posting. It's fun to see trees and plants that I would not know if not for this forum. Thanks for posting.

Great pictures, all. I love the Versigny picture but that's interesting that you find the fragrance is way better than Liv Tyler. For me LT is hard to beat for fruity. I will have to check out Versigny...lovely color. I love most of my roses but some are going to have to go. Some other plants I like very much:
bearded and Siberian irises..like the foliage when not in bloom.
Salvias except Guarnitica is too invasive
Larkspur these reseed every year and bloom with the roses, offering their cool blues and purples
cranesbills I like one I have with small dark burgundy flowers and burgundy lines in the leaves
hollyhocks
foxgloves
daylilies
Chysanthemums
clematis
tall phlox is nice and blooms so long but here it's invasive
I like bee balm but that's invasive here too and gets mildew. Want to find the one that is mildew resistant and maybe sink a pot of it.
I like annuals

Thanks, Erasmus, for that great pic. I got to check out Larkspur and Foxgloves for their blues and purple hues. What's that pretty and compact pinkish rose bush in front? Thanks in advance.

I planted Lobelia (short blue annual) but they don't like my alkaline soil. I have blue salvias flatten out in huge circle by the rain, rather than tall and skinny like Foxgloves. I'll going to get rid of my blue-salvias. Both purple alyssum and snapdragons bloom non-stop for 8 months, from April until the first frost. I'll searching for such plants, but tall ones in blue or purple color. Delphiniums hate my alkaline soil.

I don't think it is alkalinity that is giving you problems with delphiniums. I have delphiniums growing quite successfully in quite alkaline soil, pH 8-8.5. Be very generous with compost, even use composted manure. They like a rich soil. My favorite delphiniums are the Dowdeswell 'New Millenium' series from New Zealand, more robust and more likely to be perennial than the 'Pacific Giants' hybrids in my experience. You can get the following plants from Annie's Annuals: 'Double Innocence' - white; 'Sweethearts' - pink; 'Dusky Maidens' - pink with a dark bee, and 'Royal Aspirations' - bright blue with a white bee.

The plants are not cheap. If you want to try your hand at growing them from seed, you can buy seeds from White Flower Farms. I have not seen them sold anywhere else in the US.

Rosefolly

Sorry folks, my error. It is Thompson & Morgan, not White Flower, that has the Dowdeswell delphinium seeds. I hope I didn't cause anyone too much confusion.

R

FWIW, Selenicereus grandiflorus is really a rampant, climbing epiphyte that can go right up and through very large trees, using adventitious roots to hold on.

State Sen. Thomas Bard had an immense collection of imported plants at his home, "Berylwood," here in the County, and he had business dealings right around here. I'm half-sure that this, and some of the other plant oddities that turn up around here originated at "Berylwood," before the U.S. Navy took it over during WWII.

The time would be right, for the site where this was collected.

Jeri

Jeri

Do your epips everfruit? Dragonfruit is so trendy right now, we have a few epiphyllums that fruit.

Ever split a big staghorn? ours ate a plastic chair we set it on, one of these days I am going to try splitting it up

Ah, yes, I love to see these amazing plants which we are only ever gonna get a glimpse of in some gigantic glasshouse (Kew, Wales Botanical Garden, a few municiple parks (with large budgets). Not really the same as seeing them growing in someone's garden so yep, agree with Strawbs, really nice to see and hear what people are growing which is off our normal radar. If I ever rigged a heating system in my glasshouse - there will be epiphyllums, agaves, kalanchoes....
Mmmm. delphs, still time to start a late(ish) sowing for next year.

Strawberry, there are two pink roses in the foreground in that picture, a small Clotilde Soupert and The Fairy. That picture was taken some years ago when my oaks and maple trees were smaller. There is much more shade now, but the roses in that bed still grow and bloom. A couple of other blue plants I like that are always in bloom: Cape Plumbago and Angelonia. Neither are hardy.

Erasmus, be glad Cape Plumbago isn't hardy there! Here, it spreads by underground suckers; is indeterminate so it takes to the trees and can quickly smother everything in its path and nothing seems to want to eat it. Down by USC, along the freeway, I used to wonder what that wonderful, true light blue vine was, until I encountered one in an old garden. Like Kudzu with pretty flowers! I'll enjoy it in someone else's garden, thank you very much! LOL!

Angelonia here is sold as a perennial, but if it overwinters, it's never as pretty as it was the first year. It can be quite pretty, but that makes it a rather expensive annual. I use it in clients' pots, but don't waste my time with it on my hill. It hates it here, too hot, too dry. Kim

Thank you, Erasmus, for that wondrous picture of blue and dark pink rose together. If someone can breed a rose of such true blue as Angelonia, they will hit the jackpot. I assume the first blue-flower picture that Kim posted is leucophyllum ??

Another baby-blue ground-cover for shady places is perennial Forget-Me-Not. It likes wet & neutral soil, it sowns itself in my Mom's garden. I can get blue hues by Pacific Giants Delphiniums, but Rosefolly is right, they are not hardy in my zone 5a. Thank you, Rosefolly, for informing me where to get more hardy delphinium seeds. I saw HomeDepo here selling one blue Delphinium plant for $16. It's cheaper to sow by seeds.

Strawberry,

I was thinking about your trees. Are they settled now and don't need that 2004 level of watering? I take it they are not trees that are native to your conditions in the yard.

The nursery should have mentioned the unsuitability of those trees to you for sure. I can not imagine paying that much to keep them watered!

We took out our kiwi vine after hearing 50g a day (and it has returned from a bit of what looked like dead root no less...ugh)

Good question, Kippy, my trees were babies in 2004. They are big now, and I don't water any except for a white pine that got tons of 10-10-10 fertilizer dumped on (my kid's mistake). The seedless birch tree is dead now, due to the compact, hardened clay and the limestones in that spot.

If there's no chemical fertilizer, I don't have to water. Kim Rupert's Lynnie is in the no-water zone with Knock-outs and Flower Carpet. Lynnie is almost thornless, with a few tiny prickles. I got poked by Marie Pavie pretty bad, but not with Lynnie's upright stature. I don't use chemical fertilizer in that garden, and don't water that garden for the past several years.

Both roses, Lynnie and Annie Laurie McDowell have thick leaves that don't wimper in hot sun like others. Both are drought-tolerant, being bred in Kim's hot and dry climate. If I ask the bees, monarch butterflies, and hummingbirds which plants they enjoy the most, their vote would go to Kim's rose, Lynnie, with many pollens to feed on:

Kippy, we don't see them set fruit -- that's sort of disappointing. I WAS thinking, tho, of adding fuchsia berries to my morning cold cereal. They're pretty tasty, and full of anti-oxidents.

That big Epiphyllum bifurcatum probably has pups up there we could take, but getting to them is too difficult. It was big when we inherited it, but has since become massive. The plant on the right side is one of its pups, which we took before we hung it up there.

Jeri

Oh -- Strawberry -- Kim's Lynnie is almost red here, most of the time.

Jeri, I should share some cuttings of ours with you. I am not a big epiphyllym fan, but my dad was and some are left from his days working with Ganna Walska. We like making sure that those that appreciate them and Lotus Land have some. The usual ones are pretty good at setting fruit.

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My dad did gather up a bunch that I think have some virus, so those we keep away or get rid of, they are the unusual colors. I think he was trying to figure out how to rid them of their spots. Or just like rmv, figured the flower was worth it

No, I'm sorry Strawberryhill, I didn't have a shot of the leucophyllum, but you can some selections of it at this link.

http://www.monrovia.com/plant-catalog/search.php?query=leucophyllum&x=0&y=0

And the "species" here.

http://tjsgarden.com/2012/07/15/texas-ranger-shrub-flowering-desert-bush-sage/

The blue flower I posted is Salvia chamelaeagnea,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvia_chamelaeagnea

Forget Me Nots are EXTREMELY invasive here, even with the drier, alkaline soil and heavily alkaline water. They self seed several times a year and spread themselves everywhere with those marvelous "sand spur" type seeds. I have to thoroughly clean my shoes, socks and pants every time I service a garden in which they grow to prevent spreading them everywhere else. I hate yanking them out two to three times a year to keep them under control. They stick to me everywhere! They're really pretty, when they're pretty, though. Delphinium are best potted here where they can receive the type of soil they prefer, get enough water and remain mulched with snail and slug bait until they're finished. Snails ADORE Delphinium almost as much as they do Hosta. Kim

Yes. Kim's right -- our local species are things like salvias (Kim, I think that heavenly blue one we got recently is S. azurea) -- though I think the most omnipresent native species is some form or another of opuntia, which covers miles and miles of rocky hillsides.

Jeri

Those exotic plants and ferns are amazing looking. One fern I like here is Japanese Painted Fern. It is hardy and more drought tolerant than many. I have an exotic looking Passion Vine, but it is a pesty weed. I should try to eat the fruit I guess.

Kim, I don't remember Cape plumbago in CA but I bet it's a sight to see a huge plant of it. I've seen lots of it in New Orleans but haven't seen it get out of control and winters are pretty mild there. It's mannerly here. Some of mine did survive last winter but that was about the mildest winter ever .

I wish I could grow forget-me-nots. I know they're suppossed to be easy but they don't like it here. Neither does Lily of the Valley. It's too hot for most delphiniums but one time I tried some heat resistant ones from New Zealand that bloomed, then died.

My Annie Laurie McDowell and Lynnie are putting on some good growth right now. ALM is a sweet color, very much on the lilac side of pink and I love the fragrance. It isn't MORE fragrant to me so far, but has a strong, sweet fragrance. Lynnie wants to grow and bloom. The color here is deep pink, very saturated and glowing.

I love that picture, Kippy.

Hi Erasmus: I learn from what you wrote above, thank you.

Forget-me-nots like clay soil and cool wet spring. Kim is right that it can be invasive, it spreads to a HUGE patch in my Mom's 5-acres land. She also has a peppermint and spearmint patch the size of a master bedroom. Mint is super-invasive. Below are the invasive plant which I tortured myself with before I discovered fragrant roses:

1) Mint - 5 hours to kill. I gave to my neighbor: they spent the entire Saturday killing those idiots.

2) Zebra Grass, or Ribbon-grass. It took 3 people to dig up the super-deep-root clump, and 1/2 hour per clump.

3) English Ivy ground-cover. This should be banned from the planet earth. They are known to destroy mansions, choke large trees to death.... if you plant too close to the window, they can crawl inside and choke you to death while you are sleeping (just kidding). I spent 40+ hours and 1 year killing them, plus spraying Round-up into my house foundation to get rid of the roots. I was cursed eternally when I bought English Ivy for $10 from HomeDepo.

4) Pink Yarrow - I was shocked when I saw HomeDepo selling this. My Mom gave me 1 branch, it spread even to my lawn. I spent 1 year and 50+ hours killing them. They spread both by roots and by seeds.

5) Gout weed - this makes a stinky ground cover. 10+ hours killing them. Purple and white alyssum are the best ground cover, since they are annuals, and don't spread to one's lawn.

6) Italian Parsley - 1 hour killing them. Now I sink a plastic bucket 6" into the soil, both ends cut off, to keep mint and parsley inside.

7) Dr. Huey's roots - I spent 1/2 hour digging them up when I killed Knock-outs, that's why I like own-root roses.

We have cool and rainy weather for the past 2 days, now Lynnie is red like Knock-out, very much like Jeri's picture in HMF. Lynnie is far prettier than Knock-out both bush-shape and flower-appeal.

Annie prefers acidic soil and water for best growth. She was stunt from my alkaline soil and water, and NOT from the frost. Ever since I gave her acid-fertilizer high in nitrogen she grows like crazy: She was super-tiny in June, after 1 month with acidifying the water with used lemon rinds, she doubled in size. This pic. is taken this morning: