tell us about the good guys and hopefully you have access to a plant swap and can contribute those other plants....

:)

Hi there, I feel your conflict and I think you should only surround yourself with things that please you. I ripped out a whole lot of spirea, ajuga, and evening primrose and have not even missed them, just like all the clothes I gave away last year. About the Hollyhocks though, I got a tip from an American neighbour of mine: sprinkle corn meal around the roots to get rid of rust. I have been doing it after the appearance of rust for two years and this year, not a sign of rust and my plants are full of blooms. I love the tall stately long bloomers. Good luck!!

To stop some of the aggresives you can do the following,

Take a 5 gallon container, cut the botoom out, plant it, then plant the mints in it..

Also several of those are spreading via seed , I just prune it all back and feed them to the compost to limit spreading, rose companion can take over the world if allowed to reseed!

However, thats up to you.. Ive removed things I dont like ..

I tried corn meal and still had rust.. I dont grow holly hocks any longer. Then it was explained that the rust is airborn spores anyways.. not so sure what the corn meal was supposed to be doing! I have too much else to do to spray yet another plant!

Which is sad, I remember as a little kid these were all over the place.. I wonder when rust become a issue, becuase 20 years ago , it seems poeple didnt have this issue here in maine.
Silverkelt

I hope you'll get past the conflicted-ness. I'm totally with you. I laid out lots of flower beds 5 years ago when I moved to this property, and allowed the self-seeders and common varieties of things free reign in order to fill them and have something blooming. But as I get more desirable plants, I relegate the others to farther out, wilder beds without regret. I'm currently ripping out feverfew and agastache, glad to have had them, but time for them to move on. Nigella is establishing itself in a wild bed, so I can get them out of my prime perennial border in front. This is the fun of flower gardening. Every bed a work in progress.

I finally bit the bullet and started composting some of my plants instead of trying to move them. For the longest time I couldn't understand people throwing away perfectly good plants. :) White yarrow and chrysanthemums are two that have gone -- too many to move and no time to pot them up to give away.

I'm with you; I absolutely love all my ruds...they've been there since the beginning of the season, and they'll be there til the end, but they are overtaking.

I, too, apply flylady's mantra about "if you don't use it or love it, get rid of it" to my gardens.

I agree with so many of you if you don't love it get rid of it. There are so many flowers out there that need homes as well. That is another reason why I love wintersowning. If I don't love a flower I can throw it out guilt free since seeds where either bought cheaply or traded for free or for other seeds that I have/had tons of. So easy to try so many different kinds of plants. If it works for you and you love it keep it if you don't like it so well move on to the next plant. So much better than spending up wards of 5-7 dollars a plant and then end up hating it a few months later.

Paula

Spartangardener, instead of ripping out and composting, consider putting an ad on Freecycle or Craigslist. You can give them away (people will come and dig them up) or even sell some of your extra perennials cheap, and make a little extra $$.

I can NOT wait until I'm in the same position... I have so much I want to rip out, but I don't have the plants to fill it in yet.
This was only my first year WS, but I have BIG plans for this coming winter.

I'm sitting here smiling. I routinely rip out large beds, do a few every year. Thugs or not, I need a visual change and doing the work is good for body and soul. Earlier this year I hired my niece and nephew, home from college and not yet at their summer jobs, to help me whack back an overgrown shrub border and take plants to the compost heap as I shovel pruned them. Usually I do it all myself but it was nice to have the help and these two young collegiates worked hard to earn some pocket money.

One of the best aspects of being a winter sower is the lack of any significant expense to create new swaths of plants--you can rip out and redo to your hearts content and not feel it bite your wallet. I've got a back border very overgrown with massive clumps or Siberian iris, hibiscus, herbs and assorted shrubs I've all WSed. Some will be 'rescued' and go to a holding bed and then donated for charity sale next spring, but the rest of the plants will feed the compost heap. Once upon a time I felt guilty about doing such a thing, but I don't anymore.

Rip out and make new. It keeps me busy and my garden is not static, it's a perpetual work in progress. Earlier this afternoon, I was looking at the new growth filling in on the shrubs which were cut to ankle-height a few months back and I am very satisfied with how it looks now. There's lots of room still for new perennials and I've got a few pots of eupatorium to go in to the emptiest areas, but I'm not in a rush. Lots more still to rip out and lots of seeds to sow in August, and then I'll put in the seedlings by late September and they'll snuggle into their spots through October and November and then comes blessed December when the garden gets put to sleep for the winter and the Winter Sowing season begins again.

It's a constant ebb and flow of plants in and plants out in my garden, the life cycle is in full force, as it should be.

T

Thanks for sharing, Trudi. I've always been drawn to the sea and the tides--spent many years sailing every chance I got and walking the beach in wintertime just to be near the ocean, feel its power and listen to its voices. Perhaps one reason I enjoy winter sowing & gardening is because they're so closely related to the sea and tides, elemental and of the earth and her cycles.

I'm already gathering seeds from flowers that bloomed in May and June, keeping my eye on those that are blooming now for future seed-gathering opportunities. Gathering seeds, winter sowing them, planting out the seedlings & ultimately enjoying the flowers and finally gathering seeds again. It's a circle of life.

Ol' Harry Chapin song - All My Life's a Circle. It took me THIS many years to figure it out?

My kids grew up listening to HC's music. Makes me proud to see them pass it along to others as they get older--stewardship of Mother Earth, planting flowers to beautify the earth and provide food for her critters, teaching others what they learned growing up--the rewards of growing & sharing with others the fruits of their gardens.

Very, very cool.

Eileen,
That was beautiful!
I like you.
cAROL

After seeing your post I went out and looked at my thug garden -- way too many black-eyed susans, an invasion of queen anne's lace and obedient plant that's trying to take over. Huge chunks of these are gone when I get around to it. I also have to do something about the monarda -- very pretty, but getting spindly and too spread out. I still love the shasta daisies, though -- they're very cheery and bloom profusely.

What to put in their place -- no idea, but I'll get some columbine (still in its jug) in one spot for spring bloom, and leave some spots for a rud I got from seed sharing that's just gorgeous -- big and showy with some burgundy unlike the smaller, invasive BES.

I still haven't given up hope of someday getting hollyhocks, although the rust all but took over the one that came back from last year.

I love your post!

I have been thinking along the same lines. I was "overserved" last year, between plant sales and winter sowing. I have a first-year garden where things are *already* all over each other. Somebody's gonna have to go! Only keeping what I absolutely love. :)

I think it's a great plan! And doesn't it feel good to purge?

"Only keeping what I absolutely love."

Great strategy, Connie!

My problem is I can't decide who goes--lots of things are still too new to me and I can't let go of a few others that I'm sort of on the fence about. My gentian is finally blooming but when I saw the tiny flowers, I thought, "That's IT?"

Plus there are always new plants I discover that I never knew about so of course I HAVE to give them a try.

So I guess I may get to where spartangardner is--in a few more years--but just now my little green acre is still way too much lawn and far too few flowerbeds. I am stuffing the beds with WS plants so they look a lot less sparse than they did last year. I'm just not quite ready to give up on anything except maybe poppies unless I can figure out how to place them where the ratty foliage doesn't show. Maybe behind dwarf fountain grass?

I rip out every year starting now thru fall, if I didn't, I couldn't winter sow - and that just can't happen!

I now have 3 co-workers that take most my cast offs, so I have little guilt about getting rid of the plants, and no guilt about acquiring new seeds!

My conflictedness is abating, and thanks to everybody for all the comments. I've been pretty ruthless, and we also just this week had a large shade tree removed that I had built a shade garden around. We'd had some storms this summer and a branch fell off, and it became apparent that there was a great deal of rot in the heartwood. It all came down, and lucky for us that it did, because it was punky all the way to the ground. Having a 70 foot tall tree fall on my house *really* would have ruined my day.

The tree service that did the work did a fantastic job, even auguring out the roots, but when you have pieces of a 70 foot tall tree that was about 4 feet in diameter fall on your perennials, and THEN have equipment drive over the top of whatever managed to survive that onslaught....well, it's not pretty.

So there are few tiny shoots of shade perennials that are trying to recover on the blazing sun on the south side of my house, but this decision has been made for me - a sunny garden it is! So now it's time to divide stuff from other beds and hit the nursery, leaving room for wintersown stuff for next spring.

The thugs are mostly gone though. Still a few more beds to sort out, but it's been cathartic to get things cleaned up. Glad to read that many of you are in the same boat. And for those of you that aren't yet, stick with Trudi - she'll get you there.

I finally had it with gooseneck loosestrife in one of my beds, it's taking over everything, and I have to take out the rock edging to fix it. Buh bye you thug! I scored a sweet gallardia this weekend from a friend's garden, and would like to add coneflowers to attract more butterflies. I tried to tackle it tonight, but got chased out of my garden by the droves of mosquitos brave enough to challenge my off soaked self. They won.