Great topic! I've enjoyed reading all the input. The three plants in my garden which I find to be most popular with bees are lavender (which is covered with many kinds of insects along with the bees) and a couple of woody plants, an old-fashioned Roseum Elegans Rhododendron and Malus (apples and crabapples.) The Rhodie is between the house and the drive, about 5 feet from the front door and when blooming in May has so many bumble bees from when it is warm enough for them to fly in the morning until dusk that you can hear the humming from more than 15 feet away. The crab and apples seem most popular with honey bees (and the crabs are a great late winter/early spring food source for birds.) A few other perennials that the bees like but in my gardens aren't quite so constantly covered include some of the small-belled clematis like C. viorna, Nepeta, thyme, foxgloves, and Salvias. Woodies include blueberries (Vaccinium), roses that haven't been sprayed, button bush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), some of the deciduous rhododendrons, heaths (Erica) and heathers (Calluna.) There are also a bunch of plants that grow wild in the area that the bees love, though in my experience many would be most appropriate for a wild garden, not a more manicured suburban garden as they tend to spread vigorously by seed and/or by root spread: ironweed (Veronicastrium spp.) goldenrod (Solidego spp.) boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) Joe-Pye weed (Eupatorium or Eutrochium purpureum) genus has changed milkweed (Asclepias spp.) native asters, in particular blue wood or heart-leafed aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium) Many members of the mint family, like ajuga, self-heal (Prunela), beebalm, Monarda spp, and culinary mints are pretty voracious spreaders via roots and shoots and so need to be sited accordingly, but the bees do enjoy them.

My Romantic Four Seasons garden, (to be viewed with the same by Vivaldi): Winter, the entry walkway is in bloom with rows of Sweet Alyssium, and Paperwhite Narcissi, both sides of the sidewalk. In California this serves as a "winter snow-white" theme,in an area where snow never falls. The white Noisettte "Nastarana" and two "Westside Road Cream Tea" roses bloom through December. Dwarf Myrtle along the sidewalks share their fragrance with us when their foliage brushes against skirts and pant legs. Spring: fragrant purple violets, their green heart shaped foliage forms pretty clumps, forget-me-nots will come into bloom with Nicotiana mutabilis, and purple and white sweet peas, Sweet William, that I grew from seed this winter is already blooming. I have great masses of blue flowers that I forget the name of, their tasty black seeds are used on breads in the Middle east. Purple and white Petunias bloom beside "Mlle.Cecille Brunner". Summer: most of my roses are Old Garden Tea and Noisette roses and are pink and or white, so I'm adding dozens of purple Verbena among the roses, peach hued foxgoves and sky blue delphinium for color variation. I plan to plant a row of Pernetiana roses mingled with blue and purple delphinium and Monkshood. For fragrance I have Confederate jasmine, and Poets jasmine, wisteria, honeysuckle, Mexican mock orange vine and lavenders in every part of the property. I'm drawing up plans for a citrus tree to head a fan shaped herb garden and to provide shade for it. I love citrus because it has evergreen foliage and ornamental fruit in winter. I plan to have as many herbs as possible: bee balm, thyme in many forms, basil, lads love, tansy, spearmint and strawberries in crockery pots, English, Spanish and French lavender, parsley in abundance, lemon verbena, purple sage, chamomile, yarrow and an espaliered nobilis bay tree in a pot. Luxrosa

Martagon Lilies(recurved petals) Orienipet Lilies Trumpet Lilies Limelight and Tardiva Hydrangea Pinky-Winky Hydrangea Butterfly Bushes Veronicas Liatris Balloon Flowers Russian Sage Zebra Grass Showstopper, Rugosa, Fairy Roses Globe thistle (Sea Holly) Hibiscus Rose Campion Various Daylilies Sanguisorba Clematis Tantigua Oakleaf Hydrangea Phlox, Various Agastache, both kinds Periennial Salvias Rose of Sharon shrubs Butterfly weed Gallardia Tall Sedum, flowers almost open, seems early Milkweed in the fields Hostas Mullien Geranium, pink and blue Red allium about gone Lobelia, Salmon Delphinium, new, planted in spring Guess that is more than I thought! I do have annuals interspersed for steady color. Planted a bunch this week after purchasing on sale, $1 a 4 inch pot, very full plants. Added a lot of fill for the price, along with steady color. Got some very interesting morning glory plants with attractive varigated leaves, purple with white edged flowers, get about 12" tall. Used for a whole row of seeds that didn't sprout. Nice colored Coleus, Bonfire begonias, new style geraniums with dark pink, white edge flowers, blue phlox, blue salvia just keeps blooming. I got a lot of soaker hose laid last fall, sure paying off now in watering. We are getting rain, but deep dirt seems dry. Heat is pretty high, need the water. I love the perennials for variety, but count on annuals for being in bloom, color all the time. I do place a number of potted annuals around the place for bright spots. You can change them around or leave in place as anchor color.

That helps! Now I have a feel for what you’re doing! I love the “irregular” pattern of how you did your NC garden! Looks great! But you NEED more color, and when you’re able to Make Friends with perennials, you're gonna love them too! Some people want annuals for color “because they bloom all summer,” which perennials don’t do, but the great thing about something that DOESN’T bloom all summer is the constantly changing patterns and colors in your garden. There’s always “something new” to be looking at—or anxiously waiting for! With annuals, they look the same all summer, and after a while you don’t even “see” them anymore. Hang in there! We’ll get you hooked on perennials! You didn’t say if you’re willing to cut everything down—blooming or not! I’m assuming that’s something you can do—if not, chances of digging up and transplanting large, blooming plants at this time of the year and having them survive are pretty low. If they’re cut down, the “disturbed” roots don’t have so much to support, and they’re much more likely to make it. With your planter in full sun I would HIGHLY recommend you get some big pots to plant things in. Even plants that “like” full sun will struggle in the heat if they’re dug and transplanted in the sun at this time of the year. Otherwise the size and thick walls of the planter sound really good, but our “high altitude sun,” something you’re not really used to yet, can do a real number on plants—AND people! With as hot and sunny as it’s been this summer, I do think your chances of them all surviving will be less if they get put in full sun. And even if they survive the first move, keep in mind that just about as they’re starting to “settle in” in the planter they’re going to be dug and moved again, and need to survive the second move too. If they’re already struggling from the sun/heat in the planter, that will make the second move much more difficult to survive. If you can put them in pots (your “couple square planters” sound good for a couple of them), you can keep them all in part shade—out of the hottest midday sun, and when you replant them in a couple months, they can just be knocked out of the pots without disturbing the roots much and plopped into the prepared hole in the ground. A much better scenario for keeping them alive. Without seeing them, I can’t tell, but I suspect most of them could go in 1 or 2 gallon size pots. Some might need something bigger, but you could also consider dividing them when you dig them up and putting them in more than one pot—so you’d have “extra” plants to put back in the ground when you’re ready to do it. That would keep more of them in smaller pots, rather than possibly needing to go up to something as big as a 5-gallon if you have some really big plants. I’ll bring this up now—just as a heads up! Not being used to our high altitude sun, I suspect you’re going to be inclined to overwater everything—whether you decide to try the big planter, or in pots. You’re going to need to tie your hands behind your back and keep them there until the soil is AT LEAST half dry. When plants are cut down they use far, far less water than when they have a lot of foliage, so, even with the heat, it will probably take them a while to get sufficiently dry to need more water. Watering in containers is considerably more difficult than watering in the ground. A quick version of the blurb I post around here all the time! The roots are the most important part of the plant! Roots need both moisture and oxygen. When the soil is saturated, there’s no oxygen in it. As the soil starts to dry, oxygen moves back into it, so, when it’s “wet” there’s some, but not much, and when it half dry, there’s much more. Soil that’s “saturated” will kill (most/many) plants very quickly. Soil that’s “wet” all the time will kill them—more slowly! When there’s no, or not enough, oxygen in the soil the roots rot, and there is often no visible problem “above the soil” until it’s too late! So ere on the side of too dry! Dry plants will be very unhappy—but they won’t die (unless you leave them get ALL the way dry—and stay that way!) It’s important with (most) potted plants to saturate them completely when you water them, and then not water again until the soil is half—or more—dry. If a plant is wilting in the heat/sun, but perks back up and looks ok when it’s in the shade again, it’s still wet enough. (We also have plants out here, especially some of the xeric ones, that wilt in the heat—every day—because that’s how they “conserve moisture,” and it’s part of what makes them “xeric.” If in doubt, ask! (But if you’re asking something specific like that, start a separate thread—which helps other people find the answers they’re looking for.) If any of that doesn’t make sense to you, or you need clarification on some of it, just say so! Try to keep as much soil attached to the roots as possible when you dig the lavender (and the others too). My impression is that they don’t like “being ripped out of the ground” (dug up!) very much, and the more soil you can keep on the roots, the more likely it is that they’ll survive. It sounds like you have more than one plant, and if you do, the good news is that as long as even one of them survives the double move, as soon as it blooms again it’ll be dropping seeds all over the place and you’ll have lots more of them! There was one lavender plant that had already died when I bought this house, but it had already reseeded a couple others, and here, 9 years after I bought it, you can see there are a whole bunch of them! There are even more small seedlings coming up all over the place this year—and some of the older plants have died off, which seems to be pretty normal for English lavender! [My “embed” links don’t work anymore to post the actual pics since houzz took over the forums, so you need to click on the links now to see my pics!] https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/0C3JAK73XCmpHKk8L5iAysMrkJwdU94FGuazjag0pjo?feat=directlink You didn’t mention anything about possibly having a separate xeric area, but I highly recommend you plan to do that! Pick the hottest, sunniest spot you have, and put your Russian sage there, and then add other xeric things that you like. Most of my xeric plants fail because they get watered too much—along with the other things that need more water, and my yard doesn’t’ really have enough sun for xeric things either! [BTW, Russian sage is at least partially tap rooted, and tap rooted plants are hard to dig up after they’re established, so that one could be hard to successfully move.] One other thing! When you’re planning to start digging up the plants, water the area very well (that means doing it slowly with our soil out here!), and deeply enough to get to the bottom of the roots of what you’re gonna dig up. Do it at least 24 hours before you’re gonna be digging, so the water can completely soak in before you start. You didn’t mention your soil, but, assuming you have our “normal” clay, trying to dig anything up when it’s dry or mostly dry will be almost impossible. There are LOTS of wonderful perennials you can think about planting! Here are just a few examples! Black-eyed Susan https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/UoPB8Du2lGbCBdBTkTaB6Q6vb2FQp28JjCT4rlaJfOg?feat=directlink Balloon flower – the (only) short one! https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/wa0kgFNoqJygVcDgNc1rjMMrkJwdU94FGuazjag0pjo?feat=directlink Coreopsis https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/TVH02YtIyBlOqyk_CtBAXw6vb2FQp28JjCT4rlaJfOg?feat=directlink Rocky Mountain Penstemon, Penstemon strictus https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/vEfKOUo7850lTn1NWVM3aw6vb2FQp28JjCT4rlaJfOg?feat=directlink This is ‘Becky’ Shasta daisy – two months after digging up most of the plant, ‘cause it was getting too big, and giving a bunch of them away at a swap! https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/YCHvrhE-Wls2BSm1Tz0PPxdSjuQv704GFYbu_rm7VB4?feat=directlink Goldenrod (yellow) and ‘Royal Candles’ spike Veronica (purple) https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/rIUZMmLl6sE0fwCtYTbyzwX9MxwOZmSrWFKwU5Jr3u8?feat=directlink Here’s one of my (2) creeping baby’s breath—but, actually, this one died a couple years back, so now I only have one! But they really are pretty little things! [Yes! Plants die on me too—and I’ve been doing this for close to 70 years!] https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/W529oOcN1Wt5Ej99a1rdxAX9MxwOZmSrWFKwU5Jr3u8?feat=directlink Just something to get you salivating—and wanting them enough to knock some of the fear out of it! A perennial garden isn’t something you put in—PERIOD! It’s an “evolution!” You try things, and if they don’t turn out the way you expected, you either dig them up and move them, or dig them up and give them away and try something different! And, thru the summer, there’s always something new to catch your eye, as other things are finishing blooming. It’s a succession of different shapes and colors and forms—that almost seem to have no end! Some will die! Most will make it! If something dies that you really like, you try it again. If something dies that you didn’t care that much about, it gives you room to try something else! And, above all else, gardening should be fun—so relax and enjoy it! [After you get all the hard work you’re describing right now done!] And don’t let “Rocky Mountain Gardening” intimidate you! Many/most of us “started” somewhere else! I grew up in HUMID Illinois! Wouldn’t go back there for all the money in the world! Gardening out here isn’t “harder,” it’s just different! Just takes a little bit of time to get your Sea Legs and get a feel for what you’re doing. If we all can do it, YOU can do it! Skybird