Nell, I have to confess, I'm a complete failure as far as planning goes. When something works around here, it's by trial and error (musical plants), happy accidents or hours of constructive staring :o).

Annette

I have lots of plans. Few make it to fruition though. My perennial bed also holds shrubs, annuals, tropicals, a tree that needs to be moved, and seedlings from several packs of seed just randomly tossed about. The one area I was hoping to have lots of self-sown cleome and orange cosmos didn't work out too well.

I have managed to keep my veggies in one place, but am considering changing that too. Even the white bed has purple flowers, by accident, but I'm leaving it, this year.

I'll move a lot of things this fall. I'm taking lots of pictures everyday so that I can locate things later.

As for blooming, I'm taking notes of what others have in their gardens around here and in my zone. Like right now I could have lots of Oenotheras blooming, but none of the tossed out seeds germinated. I'll try again this fall.

I have found quite a few happy surprises though. An area that was supposed to be mostly red and orange has turned out to be purple and yellow. Or will as soon as everything is in bloom. My "hot" bed has become a cherry tomato patch.

I don't think there's any way to avoid losing track of the plan in my yard. I've had so much success with wintersowing that any bare patch of ground became a home for a new crop of seedlings. Some survived, some didn't. Gardening by trial and error is much easier when you accept that not every plan is going to be realized. I'm just happy something is growing and things are starting to bloom.

I always have a plan. I stay with my plan, keeping it in mind any time I am shopping for plants, and I never bring home a plant that wasn't planned for.

NOT!!!

I DO have plans, but they can go out the window at the very thought of a pretty blossom! My plants are more likely to languish in their nursery pots until I find a place for them than they are to suffer from an undesireable planting location.

I have good intentions, just little will power. LOL
Plants can be stuck in spaces 'for now' and still be there 3 years later. This, if they do well, and grow to 10' tall. They get moved if they don't fare well, but it is always a chore to find 'just the right place' for these spur-of-the-moment purchases, and it is hard on the plants, moving them around.

Modifications of the plan make it seem that I really have no plan.

Janie

"won't plant a tree over the spetic tank" LOL! We were just talking about having our septic tank pumped 2 days ago. That was when I realized "oh crap! the tree I planted a couple years ago is right near the tank!"
In my zeal to aquire and plant this tree I completely FORGOT that I was putting it only a couple feet away from the tank. YIKES! Will have to find another home for it. Darn! That planting I actually DID plan (except for somehow forgetting the fact that it was over the tank). I was planting a new fringe tree fairly near a bloodgood Japanese maple and thought the white fringe flowers and maroon would be nice together. Now What??!! LOL!!

I have "big" plans in my head for areas of my yard but $$ and time and the fact that I buy stuff on a whim because "oooh it's so pretty!" hinder the plans a little!

I did finally plan my perennial area for multiple season interest. I have peonies, baptisia, salvia, deutzia, and iris blooming early. Following this are daylilies, butterfly weed, phlox, verbena bonariensis and others. Then for fall I have grasses, joe-pye weed, asters, chrysanthemums. Other varieties are sprinkled in here and there as the seasons progress. The first "plan" for that area was a rose garden but that was a miserable failure so I went to "plan B" which seems to be doing well. I also made sure to pack the plants in so that there would be little to no weeding.

I find that many times I buy perennials and shrubs because I like them or they're interesting, then work on coming up with some sort of plan which usually requires them being moved multiple times before their final resting place (which is hopefully not the compost pile after all the stress of moving)!

Jeesh, Janie - haha, I read the first part of your post and though 'what kind of maniac NEVER brings home a plant that isn't in THE PLAN?' :-)

I have plans. General, wide plans, with lots of room for adjustments. Flower shoppins is the only time all year where I just buy whatever I fancy. (I save all my Christmas and birthday money for it.) I might go in thinking I need a flowering shrub for shade and come out with that plus twelve full sun plants. Ce leve. That's the fun of it!

Add me to the list of the plan-challenged. Calling my garden a Cottage Garden allows me to overlook this character flaw. It is my hope that people assume I put some effort into achieving the look of my garden (and that it was the look I had in mind).

But the truth is I try to put tall plants in back of shorter ones, and I try to plant shade lovers in shade, and that's about it. I subscribe to the theory that there are no bad color combinations in nature. Well......I do try to keep the hot oranges, etc., in a separate patch with my sunflowers, but the occasional iris violates that intention.

The iris, etc., bloom early, and the phlox, etc., bloom late. And then there's the stuff in between. So I have a fairly long-lasting season, but that's only because I like iris, etc., and phlox, etc. It wasn't the result of any plan.

I did make a chart once. It showed the names of all my roses, and where they were planted. I did this five or six years ago. I don't know where it is.

Are we supposed to plan?
I brought so many starts from the former house, that many things got plunked where ever Diane decided to plant them.
a couple of things got way taller than we realized they would.

Right now I'm still trying to figure out what is a weed and what is a seedling. This is the result of winter sowing all kinds of things I've never even seen before. Eventually I hope to get tall things near the back. I try to avoid orange blooms and I'm not crazy about bright red. They make the heat of summer seem even stronger, so that makes me focus on blues, white, yellow, pink, etc.

I've done more recording of seeds, plants and placement than ever before, but I have a long way to go to be able to call it a "plan". Since I found Garden Web last November I've gotten much more involved with my flowerbeds. My vegetable garden is feeling neglected.

Plans, maps, charts, pictures, lists, stacks of books  and then I change my mind! All of my perennial borders were in my backyard until a few years ago. I took some landscape courses before I planned the front. I decided on a Forest Pansy Redbud for a focal point. Five years later, this 15 foot GOR-geous tree is exactly where IÂd like to have a bench.

IÂve always gardened for 4-season interest. LotÂs of evergreens and extremely early and late bloomers. I have finally bridged the December-January gap and have flowers 12 months of the year. I pay attention to the colors evergreen plants and trees turn in the winter and each season for color combinations. I visit gardens in the dead of winter to see which perennials, etc. are really evergreen here in Ohio.

The year starts with hellebores, witch hazels, salix, winter aconite and iris reticulata. I have several flowering trees and plenty of spring bulbs to follow. Then (and currently) itÂs peonies and bearded iris. I have many summer favorites; mostly natives. Japanese maples, chosen by their fall color, berries and asters are some of my favorites for autumn interest.

I never follow rules about front, middle, back. It's sort of a freestyle garden around here. I always love a garden with lots of vertical spikes. I never feel like I have enough, so I planted 30+ delphiniums and 20 or so Spring Valley foxtail lilies. The foxtails are starting to bloom now!

I take pictures every 2-4 weeks throughout the year. A camera is on my short list of favorite tools. My garden is on an oversize city lot, but still quite small. WeÂve gardened here for 25 years. IÂm REALLY out of space, so now I just rearrange when I buy new plants.

Mickie

Plans you ask? Sure I have a plan. I have spread sheets, color coded lists, bloom times, growth habits and needs. Sun to shade patterns and rain run off flow, even wind and flooding habits. Sure I have a plan. I have color coded the beds, I have swaths of color that blend and move across the yard and link up from different view points. And I have managed to get three of the four seasons blooming continuously.

What I do not have however is cooperation from nature. The lady ferns took over my sunflower ridge, the birds planted sunflowers in my purple/blue beds. The forget me nots planted themselves from here to kingdom come and the monarda has somehow moved itself all over the place. The 3ft daisies became 6ft giants and blocked out the view of the yellow rose. The oriental poppies have become thugs and are technically a hedge now. The annuals became perenials and the biannuals just wintered over.

It is all working and I love what is happening but keeping to a plan is not how nature works.
Oh sure I have a plan and mother nature thinks it is very cute. ;-)

Janie, you threw me into shock with that first sentence! I almost decided to read no further.

My plan is/was to go more to shrubs and less perennials. Well, at least I am doing that in the new front shrub and tree border.

My real plan is to cover every inch of bare ground with something so the weeds won't have a chance. I love self-seeders for that reason. Now I just have to discipline myself to remove some of them!

Seriously, I am trying to see what is in bloom each season and have something going in each of them. I am light on spring and fall. The plan is to take pictures of each of those seasons and each bed and see what I can come up with.

Well yes I do.. Of course things don't always turn out according to plan. I start off by making my want list, then my garden bed arrangement plans but by the time plant sales begin,-- all that planning goes 'poof'. (And I'd spend my winter season salivating on what I'd like to do..... and I'd spend plenty on good coloured pens and paper trying to jot down my plans on paper., plus creating a scrapbook of ideas and inspiration. And was this all a waste of time? NOT. It helps ultimately when setting down the actual garden, and I had fun doing it.)

However the one thing I manage to keep in mind is succession blooming times. What I hadn't realized was that while planting according to bloom periods, I'd neglected colours. So my late spring and early summer garden is a blue phase..gradually getting into a more mixed colours of pinks and yellows... I do aim for a 4 seasons yard but I do recognize that my fall season planting needs help... I need to add asters and I need to have ideas for fall planting...

Ianna

Ahhh Glenda, a gal after my own heart "To cover every inch of spare ground" my lifelong dream. As I get older :o), who am I kidding I'm already there I have found spreading ground cover type plants are becoming my best friend. Yes, even some of the ones that are classified as invasive.

I was up at back end of the garden looking at the next weeds to tackle yesterday, one spot I put in a small piece (sprig) of Black Bamboo, it is refusing to grow so I planted a couple Ajuga plants, can't remember which one to fill in while the bamboo gets established.

The Bamboo is just sitting there but the Ajuga has taken off and... the little Euphorbia 'Fens Ruby' has decided to join in. This I had planted in gravel at the base of the rock border. I did not plan this combination, this is old mother nature doing her thing again. You wouldn't think pink and yellow would go together but it's more a rose and the yellow is more on the chartreuse side.

I have come to the conclusion this is as much her garden as mine and when a plant dies it's because she either didn't like it or was tired of it.
...or is just another one of my happy accidents. I'm thinking of cutting out the piece of Bamboo just leaving the Ajuga and Euphorbia. You know what they say about the best laid plans.....

{{gwi:672177}}

Annette

A lot of these posts sound awfully familiar, lol! I plan and plan and plan - but out in the garden, I end up changing my mind, constantly. Plus that old Mother Nature. I was out weeding and mulching today and found some self-seeded echinacea (I think!) and persicaria Lance Corporal. Now I'm trying to figure out where to move them.

I'm still working on 4 season interest. Spring is still pretty light. Right now, a lot of things are blooming or buds. I'm guessing dd's hot annuals border will star in the fall - she is getting a lesson in patience, poor thing! But the sunflowers should be spectacular!

I do take a ton of pictures, but they are stored on my work computer, so I don't get to look at them when I do my major planning efforts. I need to do something about that...

No to the first part of the question. Yes to the second part. My garden is miniscule and I let it do what it wants mostly but if I see a colour or shape gap I try to find something to fill it. A few years ago there was a flowery hole around late August/September so I got some Japanese anemones and fuchsias. I leave a lot of self sowers and have stopped trying plants which just aren't happy in my shady, poor, urban soil.

Another plant has bloomed in my white garden. More nicotiana. It's purple. *sigh*

Do I have a plan. Ha yes, I had landscaped my yard years ago and since then have been adding more gardens each year. I am not big on trees that cast a lot of shade, but my lot has lots of huge trees at the back that make a nice back drop. All was good and yes I have blooms comming out from under the snow in spring right up till freeze up. There is always something blooming in my garden.(Right now it is lungwort, tulips, grape hyacinths, daffodils and primulas.)

All sounds good right...ha. Then the neighbours from He double hockey sticks moved in. Up went a fence, okay so I made a blooming wall with impatiens, he sprayed roundup and killed them. This year, we set up a plastic roof over the area...hopefully that will work. We had a lilac hedge, again this ass with the roundup, I had to prune the lilacs so hard this spring, they ummmmm look like....lilac trees? (looking for sunshine here) Last year I put in the pink, purple and white garden in front of the lilacs....this year I moved a bunch of plants out of there to put in trees. Yes last night we planted 4 15 foot (neighbour-be-gone)trees...hopefully in far enough his roundup won't hit them. I will have to see how the rest of the plants fair this year, many of them are shade plants, so might still be okay there.

Right now my veggie garden, which was supposed to be my poppy garden this year......has turned into a perennial holding bed. Don't ask how that happened. geez.

Yup I have/had plans...but apparently I have to just plain be adaptable. At least I still have lots of blooms in my garden from spring to fall that are no where near that side of the property.

Sierra

What is this "plan" thing of which you speak?

mm....it's what your coffee cup is sitting on to keep the rings off the table. ;)

ahhhhh yes (flips over paper)...shoot...it's stuck to this other paper and won't come apart. Too much brown coffee stains...
Have to start a new one. Where's my crayola box?

I am in constant admiration of those of you who live in colder climes and can manage your gardens so successfully! Out here in coastal Northern CA any idiot can garden - it's pretty much just do a little soil work and plog in a plant. Add water occasionally and...look, real flowers!

This was very exciting to me, being an urban city rat who successfully killed every houseplant that ever came through a succession of apartments.

Now we have a small cottage on a large urban lot. So long as I keep plants with the same water needs together, it all seems to work. Out here the roses blooms four times a year, it's actually hard to prune them because they never go completely dormant. The only dreary time is mid-January to early March, when the skies are dreary gray with (much-needed) rain and most plants take a rest. There's blooms, but they're smaller, more subtle ones that aren't cutting flowers, like cestrum, osteospermum, hellebores.

Then spring starts and the whole garden explodes. We go through waves of color, but the garden quiets down again in the August-October heat. We get no rains in summer, that's our dangerous fire season when wildfires threaten the hillsides and parks. Roses and hibiscus like the heat, but it's a struggle to provide enough water as we're in our third year of drought here in CA.

I cover every square inch of ground I can wedge a plant into. In fact, my front pathway is currently disappearing under the enthusiastic flowering of one of my rarest plants: Lavatera olba 'Aureum'. Instead of a 4' wide walkway, we're down to about 12" between the Lavatera on one side and two prickly groundcover roses (also in the wrong spots, but too late to move them) on the other side!

I have a very intrepid postman, thankfully:
{{gwi:672178}}

ok, foxes- I'll give you my one and only "Planned" garden.

1. This is a raised bed over my septic area. The grass would never turn green there, so in went the bed.
2. Have to stick with shallow-rooted stuff
3. Irises were the first to go in. They are starting to bloom now, and I have several varieties of Siberian, Japanese, and Tall Bearded in there, so it's a longish show.
4. Backing up 3 months, I direct-sow the area with poppy seed during the first week of March.
5. Once the Irises are gone, the poppies are just ready to bloom. That takes me to Mid July.
6. Backing up one month, I will winter-sow some Cosmos during the first week of June, and they will be ready to transplant right when the poppy seed is gone (I do have about a 2-week period when the bed is awful-looking because I want to collect the poppy seed.)
7. Transplant cosmos, and the show is nearly non-stop from Mid-may to October.

Pix:
This first one is a few days ago; I didn't get any shots of the first few irises that are in bloom...

{{gwi:14007}}

Poppies
{{gwi:222605}}

Cosmos
{{gwi:222612}}

A plan? Absolutely! I strictly adhere to the tenants of that world renowned horticulturist Dr. Hap Hazard, and try my best to duplicate the landscapes of the famous garden illustrator Ms. Very Gaudy!

Actually, I do start out with a plan, but it is soon lost among the flowers.

I guess I have more of a philosophy than a plan. That philosophy is;
1) I built this garden to please me,
2) I will plant,grow, and shape these plants in any way that pleases me,
3) They are plants, not puppies, and don't feel pain.
Jim

Sierra you're killing me here. LOL Too funny.

I never had a garden till 2 years ago . I had a plan and we had a drought. Sigh...then the things I planted started coming back...amazing. So I decided if they could come back this year I should plant more of them. I discovered I love purple and lavender and all things in the blues. So there is a plan. The Spring is covered in my yard because of the azaleas. So now I have late Spring pretty well going and I am thinking I need more for Summer. I just ordered some grasses that are supposed to provide nice winter and fall interest. I hope so.I only got roses that are repeats and fragrant. I also have ordered honeysuckles that are fragrant and yellow as a contrast to all the blues and purples. So yes I guess I am getting a plan. But really if it grows for me it is a miracle and I am grateful to the Garden Gods. c

Yes, I have plans. Some days I can remember them.

Occasionally I get as far as implementing a plan... until I hit a big tree root and have to change the location of what I was going to plant in a particular spot. Or can't find the plants I wanted and end up buying the fabulous bargains that my local nursery is offering. Or I realize that, thinking they were weeds, I've ripped out all the seedlings coming up from what I sowed last fall and forgot about. Etc. etc.

Eighteen-24" high plants turn into 6' monsters and the 12' high shrub is still 2' tall after 5 years. Stuff happens to plans. Cottage gardening can be a euphemism for "oops."

If I can get things to look decent most of the time and really good once in a while, I'm satisfied. I've learned to keep a few things in containers so they can be placed in bare spots and have found out that most anything can be moved if you don't wait too long.

Another 20 years of this gardening stuff and I might master layering and over-planting.

Is this a trick question?

Annette "hours of constructive staring" yep did that

Janie - plans, but little willpower - yep did that

chickenmom - 'still trying to figure out what's a weed and what's a plant' - yep doing that too

mmqchdygg - 'what is this plan thing of which you speak?' - che?

Yes, I actually do have a plan and while I am not there yet (are we ever done with a garden?) I feel like I am doing well in terms of continual waves of bloom.

I have a few spring flowering bulbs here to start things off. I plan to put in lots more this fall. Going for crocus, Daffs and tulips.

Then I have many spring flowering trees and shrubs such as serviceberries, crab apples, cherries and many types of viburnums. That takes me into Azealea flowering season and very shortly after the azealeas finish, the roses start their spring flush.

Next come lily bulbs as the asiatic lilies start soon after the spring rose flush. Then the oriental lily bulbs. This year I added even more lily bulbs than last years 400 bulbs of all oriental and asiatic. This year lots of trumpets, orienpets and OT and LA hybrid lilies. All new to me as I used to have only asiatic and oriental. But I added some of those also.

This takes me into daylily blooming time and some of the lilies and daylilies will be blooming at the same time.

This brings me into August and I don't know how much bloom for august as I have added many late flowering daylilies last fallm should bloom late July and early august. There should be some late flowering lily bulbs also.

For fall, well nothing unless daylilies rebloom.

I have also been working on more bloom before the start of the daylilies and lily bulbs by planting lots of Siberian Iris, which blooms now here and am working to make a tall bearded iris bed for the TB iris I ordered comeing this july.

Of course there are many other plants in the yard blooming at various times. I like Hollyhocks, Purple coneflowers, Butterfly bushes, Sunflowers, Mexican Sunflower, Catmint, Hummingbird mints, various milkweeds and lots of annuals such as marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, varius annual salvias, Snapdragons, impatients and more.

Usually looks pretty good here.

Plan? No. I figure if you put enough in you've got it covered. ;)

Libby

libby's got it right. I have direct comparison with my mother's garden:

Her method: A) if it's not in bloom, it doesn't get purchased- period. B) Go to the expensive nursery, and buy everything that's in bloom the day she visits, and put it in. Her garden is lovely in late July for about 3 weeks. Then she wonders why her garden is not flowering hardly ever.

My method: If there's dirt showing, plant something! I sow my own flowers, I try anything & everything, and I buy several times throughout the season from different vendors. I might buy one or two 'big' things from a nursery, but I don't generally do flats of annuals anymore. I want that non-stop show, and I love that there is ALWAYS something in bloom at my house.

Libby very funny. What happens if you plant something, (lily bulbs) and then forget and plant on top? Is that having it double covered? :O No sir, I would never do that. LOL!

Bluesunflower, Ya I made is sound funny, but dealing with this neighbour is actually far from fun or funny. It looks like my lilac ummm trees are going to bloom. Imagine that! Now I need more shrubs.....what shrubs will grow here that the birds will like? Hmmmm I must be on plan xy and z.....by now. What happens when I run out of letters?

Sierra

Sierra-
Excel says you go to (plan) AA, AB, AC...etc...just keep going!!!! bwahahahah!!!!

Sierra, I hate to encourage combat with the neighbor, but have you told him that his chemical overspray is damaging your plants? It seems to me that RoundUp is a chemical that's specifically designed so it can be applied to specific plants. If it can indeed be targeted that close-in, and his use of it is still damaging your plants, that tells me he must be using some kind of spray applicator. Maybe you could ask him to try a different application method, because the sprayer is causing expensive damage (not to mention heartbreak) on your side of the fence.

Janet

lol mmq.

Janet this neighbour has done this on purpose. He also did many other things. Authorities have been dealing with it. The RCMP, Bylaw, Child services and the Mayor. I lost $1500 in plants alone last summer. I don't want to take this thread off topic.... I have been told by the authorities to carry on in my yard like normal. So we will see what happens.

Off to plant up more planters....it is really hot out there today.

Sierra

Sierra I am so sorry to hear about the truth of this nightmarish neighbor you have. I truly admire your determination and persaverance to continue gardening.