While I certainly have multiple plants of the same variety, they were rarely bought at the same time! If something works well in the garden, I will buy another one if I see an appropriate place for it.... I usually buy individual plants so I get to try out more things to see what works best. On the other hand, I DO have a generally clear idea of the look I want to achieve in a particular spot so only buy things that I think will contribute to that look. For instance, I wanted silvery plants in a shady area, so I tried several different silvery brunneras and several different silvery ferns, a blue hosta with white edging, green and white variegated euonymus and green and white variegated weigela. So, there are lots of different individual plants, but they all contribute to a silvery feel. In some cases I added a few more of the ones that seemed to work best. I do the same sort of thing if I want an area to have a particular flower color theme. So, I start with an overall objective for each area and then see how many different things I can plant to achieve it. That allows me to have lots of different plants without (hopefully!) creating too much of a random mess :-)

There is something I've been wondering about for some time now having been on the forum for a few years. You often talk about how many seeds you buy and sow. So, if each package has 100 or more seeds typically or maybe only 20 in some cases of special seeds, where do all these plants eventually end up? Seems like it would be entirely possible to grow several of one kind and create a mass plantings without much effort at self control or buying 20 or so of all the same kind of plants.

One of the best ways to insure mass plantings is to plant self seeders, I'm thinking about your allotment. They don't have to be aggressive but over time drifts will form unless you commit to spending a lot of weeding so resolutions or self control wouldn't even be an issue.

Indeed, Tex - sowing seeds has meant I can sow in generous swathes...but as always, the question of space rears it's head. Consider, I may sow, I dunno, say 100 different seed lots over a season...and 100 4 inch pots does not take up masses of space...but I still tend to fill nearly every inch...and then the fun (nightmare) starts...when they germinate. Allowing for a scant 50% germination...and keeping, say 10 seedlings for each type...this rapidly multiplies to 500 plants...and as I have a couple of thousand pots, not totally panicking yet...although every bit of wall, seating and tables and footspace is getting fuller. I colonise the pavement outside my house (front and back) and keep more space every year at the allotment for nursery beds (they are out of hand, in fact). I try and get plants in the ground as tiny as possible (and direct sow far more than I sow in pots)...but even so, I have a dilemma of either caring for hundreds of seedlings, sometimes for the entire summer (and thankfully, attrition is high) or being stony hearted and composting loads of them...which I do...but not before I have tried to fob everyone I know off with spare plants.

I have had the woods for 4 years now (this will be my 4th year)...and have definitely made use of big numbers - sowing many dozens of seedlings which can simply vanish in 5 acres. But I have been reduced to sneaking seedlings in on public land, the local graveyard, municipal green spaces, empty window boxes, traffic roundabouts...it's an issue. I have sold a few on Ebay...but it is such a faff - packing and posting. Different to the days of buying a single plant and still running out of space...but fundamentally, still the same (basically greed).

And yep, it looks a mess - I tell myself it is a charming mess (and some times it really is) but mostly, it is a horrible mishmash of far too many small pots, many in some dire state of neglect. Short attention span - not evolved beyond foot stamping toddler-hood.

OMG yes - books have completely overtaken the interior...so much that stairways and passages are only passable by turning sideways - no hope carrying a tea-tray. On the plus side, I have not had to paint a wall (apart from the kitchen) in over 20 years...since there is no longer any visible wall-space left. And they are good insulators.

It is less of a 'song', Lalennoxa...and more of a 'shriek'.

Campanula, I have always loved your writings--so much like an English novelist, which you may be. Now I see that you are a kindred spirit. I always need at least one of every plant that I see--the collector syndrome. In addition to all of those plants that dominate my yard, now that it is winter I have plants in the house, in the garage, in the washroom and the hardier ones dumped on the south side of the garage with a mass of pine needles for a blanket against the cold. My poor husband complains about mowing since he has to be vigilant about running over plants that just keep expanding from their beds. What is one to do? You can tell that I have no garden strategy but I may give it some thought when spring comes and I see how many plants have returned after last season's dreadful drought.

Oh, and those books! They run a close second to plants. I haven't found any that I can keep outside so I have to content myself with borrowing from the library. Of course, every once in a while a books manages to weasel its way in here some how.

Campanula, thank you for the tea (I've made myself a pot and I know how important it is to curing the world's ailments - maybe why I am drinking more of it these days). This decluttering topic is a biggie. More and more I've been on the clutter belief that we often develop a relationship with 'stuff' and this greatly affects our ability when it comes down to keeping it under control. Or the object represents a feeling of a time and place, or a person, or anything. I was having this discussion with my neighbour - I went over to bring her some papers, and it turned into an hour discussion about decluttering. She was looking through her messy library, and yet finding it difficult to part with some of her old text books. But it was only when she began to question her relationship with the books did it become a bit more clear what was going on. One, for example, she said she has had for 20 years. Did she ever refer to it? No. Did it cost an arm and a leg at the time? Yes. Did she hate the course, and the teacher, and the subject? Yes. So she began to come around to the reasoning of why she was keeping this expensive book around of something she hated and was not even using.

You get the drill. years ago, I collected posters. So many posters, all in cardboard tubes, most not displayed - not enough money to frame them; not enough wall space to display them if I could. Posters, posters, posters...and then I had this strange vision of the posters going up in flames, and maybe me with them - and all I could think was I wouldn't even know or remember what the posters were. After that, I sold most of them.

But it's an ongoing consideration. I'm prepping myself for a big decluttering as we head into spring - and that includes the garden!

Suddenly last year, I finally realized I could no longer plant everything I wanted to try. I did cut down on planting containers, it's easy to get a $100 in one pot. then there is the watering when it's over 100 out, and they might need it twice a day. This year I'm going to cut down on the vege garden. Only 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 1 colored pepper. Spinach is already planted last fall. If we have sun for 2 or 3 days I can pick enough to put in salad. But I must have a zucchini and some okra. and of course a row of beets, how is it possible to cut down?

And when my daughter comes to visit this spring, she will want to fill all my large pots with flowers, and then when we have the Garden Club plant exchange how can I not buy a few new things? Help me, I'm 83 and running out of gardening space there must surely be a way to get rid of this urge to plant every new thing I see. I don't know how I can ignore my new fence, it needs something to break up 100 ft of new. And there is a good 3 ft in front of it thats bare ground. More catalogs coming every day with lots of temptations. Spring is coming!!

It's okay...you, me, Camps...we all have PCD - Plant Compulsive Disorder. I figure if everyone else has something, I might as well have something too!

This year I'm going to cut down on the vege garden. Only 2 tomatoes

Uh huh. That is going to last exactly until the next visit to a nursery selling tomatoes, when you will see some wonderful variety you must try.

I totally understand .... my best garden is my "fence" garden which I planned all winter and used quite a bit of repetition.

My front garden; however, is a series of extensions with each reflecting my current obsession at that point in time. There is the part that I was just desperate to fill in, the one I packed with something of everything and the newest portion that is making up for the lack of peonies in the other gardens by packing six in one long run.

I want my garden to look nice, but if I'm totally honest, that is a secondary and rather reluctant concession to social norms and aesthetics. Instead, I just want to experiment and watch things grow (or die - whateves). If it happens to look good - great! I do make a token effort here and there. However, I'm more focused on the plant itself.

I suffer from PCD and always feel guilty about it. I've tried to compensate by trying/struggling, (but without the best success!), to have a good garden design, one that has "bones" that will help it tolerate my tendency to go for the plant that appeals rather than the plant that fits into a particular spot.

I'm pleased that my latest garden is the best ever by far at this. Not perfect, but pretty good. It has an almost continuous curved sweep of dwarf conifers that goes through the mid level of most of the three main garden areas and ties them together and even though they are all different, they still serve as a mass planting.and if I do say so, it works very well. Even better, it has also allowed me to indulge my PCD on those mass planted but still unique dwarf conifers. How good is that! The borders are often, though not always, edged with the same evergreen grass, Calamagrostis foliosa, another mass planting that ties the garden together. In between and all around there's enough space to put a variety of plant choices in. So far so good and much better than previous garden designs.

in my perennial bed, I'm using grasses as a unifying element.

An unexpected bonus is that having good bones has also inhibited my tendency to go for "onesies" all the time. Still, all is not perfect. I am still at heart a collector and get obsessed with trying something new so I am not completely reformed by any means. And my garden will never win any design awards and I'm okay with that.

Having a few of lots of things, like woodyoak says, gives you a chance to try them out in your garden. As a novice perennial gardener that's been helpful for me. I expect that with time I'll find some things I like better than others and then propagate them to increase their numbers while pulling out what doesn't work so well. That's the theory at least.

In reality I enjoy purchasing plants much more than I enjoy dividing the ones I have. One of the big problems is the native plant sales they have here in town every spring. They bring only a dozen or two of each plant, so it doesn't seem right to take all of a certain species, depriving everyone else. You can call ahead and place an order that they'll bring along with the sale plants, but I never do that. I like to browse.

I LOVE to browse. I've come across the most wonderful plants this way. Our native plant sales are similar, too few plants of each to achieve a mass. But for experimenters like I am, it's not a problem because I simply don't have Woodoaks design mindset when I shop.

Woodstea, Ive gone through a similar experience to yours with my perennial area.. I've experimented or tried so so many different ones over the years, though I never tried to achieve a sequence of bloom, I'm way too much of a collector for that. More recently I've focused on long bloomers that attract pollinators. I'm down to many fewer varieties now. They are almost exclusively long bloomers, Penstemon 'Sour Grapes', various Agastache and lots and lots of the new Echinaceas, along with a mass of five grasses, Pennisetum Ginger Love'. It's all edged with the same smallish evergreen grass, Calamagrostis foliosa. I'm really amazed at myself.because it all looks far less chaotic than in years past.

Echolane, every time I see a post of yours I feel a twinge of regret that I ever moved back from the Bay Area after spending the late 90s there. I assume MidPen means you're somewhere near Menlo Park, whose climate I thought was just about the most perfect I've experienced.

One plant I could happily use in multiple beds for continuity is Echinacea 'Virgin'. Unfortunately it's an expensive one. I haven't seen it locally and the best source I know of is Santa Rosa, who sells it for $9.95. Very long bloomer and a great plant for combinations.

WoodsTea, I can understand why you'd regret leaving this area with its nearly perfect weather and gardening climates. I live in neighboring Portola Valley and I don't ever want to live anywhere else.

i discovered Santa Rosa Gardens in the fall of last year and found it a wonderful source of mail order plants, especially grasses. Thanks for the tip on Echinacea 'Virgin'.

FlowerGirl, I should have responded to your message earlier when I read you have a 100' of new fence to cover with 3' of bare ground to cover. Oh I am so jealous, what I wouldn't give for that much more space to plant in! what are you going to plant there??

My theory is 1) make sure it grows well here (so buy one) 2) divide or otherwise propagate it if possible 3) Buy more if I absolutely have to (and if I had room).

I'm willing to wait three years for a clump to divide, or three years for seed to germinate and grow to plantable size. Though if something is quite special and hard to find, I might buy two of them.

I have pot forests but usually things only sit in pots for a growing season and everyone gets tucked in for winter in it's permanent place.

Yes! This is my focus this year (and last year too) ... to have a bit more cohesion in the garden. I absolutely must have some chaos, my spirit craves it. But I think I would like to enjoy the "big picture" more. As it stands, my garden is pretty awesome... so long as you are viewing it up close while wearing blinders. LOL! There surely is some place between painstaking perfection and 'witless muddle' (perfect description!). I have seen evidence of its existence here.

I have purchased seed for some self seeders to allow a genius higher than mine to have some reign: centranthus ruber, browalia americana, lychnis coronaria, nicotiana alata and others that I can't recall at the moment. I did try to stay away from super aggressive self seeders but sometimes hard to know until you try. I wintersow seed from my existing perennials every year and hope that in a few years I will have bigger blocks of plants.

This is the fourth season at my property so I am hoping to divide some of my favorites this year as well.

My curiosity and thrill for new plants seems limitless and yet my property and time to care for them is so very finite. I put myself on a hiatus from thinking about gardening this winter and focused on other creative projects. But the weather here is so strangely warm, I wonder if spring will be here sooner than later and I am struggling to ignore the call of my garden.

echolane, I'm still struggling about what to plant on that fence. As the sun begins to come around, I need to take some pictures at various times of the day to see how much shade the fence will cast. I have a shorter fence with the same outlook and I have there some peonies, clematis, and a few bulb lilies. I have a lot of spring bulbs there and a few rose bushes, also a few hardy hibiscus. lately I planted some echinacia. So I know all these things will do well. So far all I know for sure will be clematis and some daylilies. do you have any ideas?

It would take me hours and days and maybe even months to make a decision because I would want to try a lot of things and would have difficulty choosing. :-)

One of my favorite shrubs right now is Fothergilla. And I love Itea virginica Henry's Garnet. Both give great fall color and are so good looking all year. I've enjoyed various hydrangeas and roses a lot too. My garden always has to have grasses incorporated, so I'd fit them in somewhere too.

Please tell me about the grasses? I have been afraid to buy any for fear they will seed down. I will look up the Itea.

About grasses: I'm prejudiced as they are my favorite plants and I can't imagine my garden without them. My favorite grass is one or another cultivar of Pennisetum alopecuroides. Right now I'm growing Desert Plains, Ginger Love and Hameln. I've never had a seedling,

My co-favorite grass is Camagrostis foliosa, an evergreen grass that looks great all year and I don't have to shear or (so far) even divide. Never had seedlings,

I also grow Calamagrostis Overdam, Panicum Heavy Metal, Bouteloua gracilis and Bouteloua gracilis 'Blobd Ambition', Stipa gigantea, Stipa ichu, Stipa arundinacea, Sesleria autumnalis, Sesleria John Greenlee', and Deschampsia cespitosa. Some of these are known to seed to some degree and some of those are too née to me to know about then in that way.

i would definitely avoid Stipa tenuissima for its noxious seeding about.

How can you people make all these posts about your crazy packed insanity gardens filled to the brim with unusual plants and not include any photos? It's borderline cruel. I want the full tour! It's so funny to picture someone sneaking seedlings into unoccupied planters. Let me give you my home address.

I'm currently staring at a big flat empty Louisiana yard with little more than weeds and several big ugly water oaks (which are only good for dropping plagues of acorns and randomly falling over onto your house or car).

It's my first year with seeds. I had a taste of success growing marigolds and tomatoes... Now I have a grocery bag full of seed packets, and I will consider it a failure if I don't get most of them into the ground next month. It's impossible to keep ambitions within reason. I want to grow everything. Especially zinnias-- as many kinds as possible. Fields of them.

Lizzie

Campanula, It's almost a month later - what are you up to? Unlike you, I'm not much of a seed sower, but I await pessimistically my fall sown flat of seeds, half of which is Echinacea pallida, the other half Ratibida pinnata.

It's still not too easy to get into gardening as it's been almost constant rain here, my rain gauge collecting almost 38" so far which is well over normal, in fact nearly twice normal with a little exaggeration. Not too much happening in my garden yet, though it is waking up. Early grasses are sporting new green shoots. I can't take my eyes off my guilty, but couldn't resist purchase of Disanthus cercidifolius, which is unfurling its very pretty cercis-like green leaves unusually early for a deciduous plant, even in my fairly friendly climate that's about six weeks early. Tonight will dip to almost freezing so I hope it won't do my early bird any damage, but after tonight warmer at last, with daytime temps forecast to be inching into low sixties.

I moved so many plants in November that I have some smallish bare areas to plant and I can't decide what to put there. My usual problem of design indecision, but I can guarantee it won't be five of this and seven of that. It'll probably be a few mini-conifers, each unique, that won't outgrow their spaces too quickly.

Lizzie, I don't know whether I'd cheer or cry when faced with a large empty yard again as it took me nearly 40 years to experiment my way to a reasonably good design, so I'm that glad I don't have to start from scratch again. I do remember the enthusiasm, though, lucky you. Interesting photos a little scarce right now.

echolane-

Sounds like you've still got a while before you can really get going. Are you looking at April?

It's definitely been a learning experience, but I've finally got basic seed starting down. In addition to being a newbie to seeds, I am also new to Louisiana Zone 8b/9a. What little I learned growing up in Iowa Zone 5 doesn't necessarily apply. Some of the plants I love most don't do well here (lilacs, peonies...). Many plants grown as annuals up north are perennial here (ie lantana). Some things will grow fine, but I am badly thrown off by the unfamiliar planting schedules. Sow poppies and cabbage outdoors in November? That's crazy talk! I find myself with seeds that I should have planted half a year ago. Like 90 ranunculus claws. Darnit.

Lizzie

as it's been almost constant rain here, my rain gauge collecting almost 38" so far which is well over normal, in fact nearly twice normal

So is this moisture widespread enough to help California with its drought?

It's still not too easy to get into gardening as it's been almost constant rain here, my rain gauge collecting almost 38" so far which is well over normal, in fact nearly twice normal

Still a DROUGHT?

Great discussion although I only had time to skim most of it...

goes back to that saying about planting in "drifts of one"...

I deal with the same thing because at heart I am a collector at heart and I make no bones about it. The thrill for me is mostly in the variety. However now that I've matured a bit I see that my garden needs to be cohesive in some areas and a part of that would probably be having larger areas of a variety.

As someone else mentioned starting seeds is one economical way to do it. So I'm going to be trying to have a large patch of cardoons this year, I have a theory that if planted out just barely small enough to fend for themselves instead of the big, underpotted plants you can typically buy at herb nurseries, they will maybe establish better and be a bit hardier. (though around here a winter like the polar vortex ones will surely kill them off completely - hopefully they will gently self-seed by then)

Another way of course is to just buy cheaper plants. I wanted to root the excellent lepidote rhodie "24 karat" to have backup plants.* Well, you have to send enough to Van Veen to assume they will get a few returned, if that proves hard to root. If all them root, you have to buy all of them! BUT, they only charge, oh I can't remember exactly, 3 or 5 dollars per plant, when you send them a lot of cuttings. So now I have ten of them! I will surely give some away over the next couple years, but the timing of this thread is perfect because I was just yesterday looking at the vast sea of rooted cuttings I have from Van Veen (over 50 plants!) and thinking "I should just plant a big patch of 24 karat. Imagine how awesome that would look in a few years when they all grow together" (it would also smell nice on a warm summer night as they release their cologne-like odor)

* the PNW crew might say this variety is modest, but it is the only 1/2 cinnabarinum subsection hybrid that grows will around here, and it is extremely 'floriferous'...mine never seems to waste energy on seed production, maybe because there's nothing for it to cross with - it is very early - and it is already quite 'outbred' as it is, with the other parent being a Japanese species from another subsection

echolane I didn't google everything on your list but in the bay area, if you like grasses, I assume you are growing some restios?

davidrt28 - your reference to planting 24karat en masse and the scent brought on a flashback memory to late May 1993 when, on a visit to England, we stoped at Leonardslee Garden when the rhododendrons, azaelias, camellias etc. we're in full bloom. Walking along the valley bottom, the scent was overpowering! It's too bad the property was sold and the garden closed to the public in 2010. Maybe someday it'll open again.... It made a lasting and powerful impression on us. It was certainly an extraordinary example of planting masses of the same/similar things!

You are lucky to have seen that garden, woodyoak.

David, good guess! I saw my first Restio at the San Francisco Garden Show and was hooked, and my interest quickly turned to acquiring some. That wasn't so easy as most are not common. Was even persuaded to give a talk on them to my local garden club. Most Restios are much like the big Grasses I've abandoned, too big, because my small garden just doesn't seem well designed to accommodate them. I have a small Elegia capensis and the much larger Thamnochortus insignis remaining. I've put two Thamnochortus at the back of my perennial bed hoping that it's evergreen nature will perk up the otherwise not so interesting appearance of perennials in winter. But I think they will only last a few years because of size.

My alkaline soil has saved me from the tyranny of rhodie collecting (and I guarantee I would have succumbed as these are probably the ur-plant of my childhood). Joyously though, my big news of the day has been the germination of milk parsley - thyselium palustre - the ONLY food for our almost vanished native swallowtail which is now only endemic in a few square miles of Norfolk (where I have a little pocket wood). Sourcing this modest plant has taken me four years, intense frustration of a couple of false starts until I finally paid an arm and a leg for a small packet of deliciously fresh seeds-(an absolute essential requirement - fresh season seeds from a plant which only sets seed sporadically. I have wafted over the seed pots on a daily basis until half a dozen totally recognisable umbel cotyledons appeared this morning (cue screams of delight).

echolane, well most of them are big but I think that makes them even more interesting and otherworldly looking. Glad you've gotten to try a few.

Congrats Campanula! I can sense the thrill it was to see those cotyledons emerge. Hope they'll grow on for you.

Here's my overgrown Thamnochortus insignis at the front of my house.

I decided it had to go and searched local nurseries for a replacement without success. Then one day I walked into my local nursery and saw some Restios. They were labeled Thamnochortus insignis, but unlike mine, had ferny foliage at their base. I took them anyway, but much prefer Restios without that ferny foliage so I decided to try to divide the big one. What a job! It took three of us and I think there were ten divisions. My division is finally shooting after some four months of wondering.

How exciting about the milk parsley, campanula! There's a number of plants in my garden I could only get by seed and seeing those first tiny sprouts of a plant I had so eagerly looked forward to - wow, what a thrill!

I have a PJM rhododendron that was planted by the previous owner in my heavy clay, alkaline soil. It looks unhappy most of the time. I totally get the appeal, an evergreen flowering shrub that can survive in our zone? I wish they liked our soil.

echolane, I am not familiar with this plant but your Thamnochortus makes quite a statement!

Very bold Echolane. I admit to being ambivalent about grasses (and sedges, restios, and rushes), blowing hot and cold. I had an extended love affair with stipa gigantea, the centrepiece of my gravel garden...although little blue festucas and heliotrichons didn't really do it for me...but I don't think it was a size thing because I adored that tiny bright green deschampsia 'Tatra Gold'. Anyway, they had dropped off my radar again until I got our wood and planted a slew of molina, pennisetum and carex testacea...and now they are back on again (getting a little muhlenbergia collection going).

Can't live without grasses :-). My favorites are Pennisetum alopecuroides cultivars which for me epitomize gracefulness. I've tried literally dozens of grasses and pared down my list to just a few. I've almost eliminated big grasses like Miscanthus because they get too big and need major muscles to divide them and keep them to size. Age gets in the way of doing those things now.

Calamagrostis foliosa is a must, an evergreen grass that looks good in all seasons and in my experience never even needs shearing to look good, but unfortunately is not cold hardy enough for all zones. And a half dozen more I like to keep around like Panicum Heavy Metal, Calamagrostis Overdam, Molinia caerulea variegata, Stipa gigantea, etc.

i love some Restios too. Like grasses, I've tried many. Like grasses, you need muscle to keep them to size. Unlike grasses, they are not readily available and often enough such rarities that you just can't find them. Don't judge Restios by my photo as that one was way overgrown at about 13 years of age. It was much admired by my visitors for at least the first 7-8 years or more. It was incredibly attractive and graceful.

Restio flowers are often so decorative!

Resrio culms are often so decorative!

Yeah but...just the sight of those culms gave me a horrible shudder. The first few years of my professional gardening career coincided with the UK's dying love affair with bamboo which seemed to afflict surburban gardeners - I lost track of the number of unfortunate bamboo invasions ('they said it was a clumping form at the garden centre') which had wrecked ponds, paths, wall foundations, even invading buildings and breaking concrete...to never, ever considering these huge grasses for even a nano-second. One home-owner moved house! When a gardening friend proudly showed off her blue Lyme grass ( elymus magellanica - 'its very popular at Great Dixter') I almost opened a book on how many months would go by before regret soaked in.

And then there is (for me anyway) the eternal problem of getting weed grasses (poa and wild oats) in my grasses...and those that seed over-enthusiastically (anomethele lessoniana) for me to be very reticent indeed about grasses in either of my town gardens.

Oh yeah, the other aspect - those which thrive and are mannerly, such as the Japanese hakones...are perpetually grazed to a nub by the collie. Not the problem free plants I fondly imagined.

Then again, I have heard all this and worse about roses...but it never deters me from even more rampant, thorny ramblers...so, horses for courses.

but unfortunately is not cold hardy enough for all zones

I really enjoy reading about people's favourites.

Maybe this should be in a separate thread but echolane (and others) do you have some favourite grasses that would be cold hardy to a zone4/5? (All I have is Carex "Ice Dance" and Hakone "All Gold"...we like both very much but I am looking for a medium height, still very beautiful, 'traditional' grass).

Bamboos give me a bit of a shudder too, and I've only tried the clumping bamboos! They are like grasses on quadruple steroids. I had to get rid of them in my garden. I had quite a few and it wasn't easy digging them out.

Restios may have culms but I'm happy to say they are nothing like bamboo and instead are quite mannerly, though they can get overgrown and more difficult just like any other plant.

rouge I am a fan of Ornamental Grasses and a favorite of mine, like echolane is Molinia caerulea 'Variegata'. Since you do not have too many sunny areas available this one would be ideal. It can take full sun but also partial shade equally well. If you had a spot in full sun Sporobolis heterolepis is another winner.

If you could use a 3-4' in full sun Panicum virgatum 'Shenandoah' is very nice.

As always, thank you for your specific suggestions peren.all.

Camps, has 'the UK's undying love affair with bamboo' subsided? Whenever I catch a British garden makeover show on the internet these days - which usually has Alan Titchmarsh running into some needy person's home to create the true garden space that they deserve - they often still plant bamboo with glee. I would be freaked out at the thought of planting in my garden - I learned my lesson with that garden thug, petasties japonicus - but the recent conversation about bamboo in containers has me thinking it might be interesting in a container.

Just the thought of hakonechloa makes me angry. The one plant that for all intents and purposes should do really well in my garden - but thus far it has refused to thrive. When I see homes with big bunches of the stuff there's a silent rage within. I had better see some action this year!

I have grown bamboo in bamboo barriers with a certain amount of success. 30 years and it remained contained with a yearly search for escaped runners. I have moved from that house and bamboo has still not taken over. It was running bamboo to that my husband planted before I came onto the scene. My neighbor across the street had warfare with their neighbor who ran barrier on his side of the clump of black bamboo he planted but no barrier on the neighbor property line. The neighbors highly designed garden was destroyed by the ripping up of escaped culmns. Highly inconsiderate.

I have taken to gardening in drifts since I do have a Large place. I use seed sown into native grasses. Sometimes they do not appear for years because of fickle Texas weather. Often I will buy one plant and then distribute seeds. I am just the last two years getting gobs of Texas prairie parsley that I am able to move seedlings out into the field. I have moved maybe 50 of them this year. I have also been buying similar pots in sequence to force a sense of design into my pot city. I spent more on pots this year than on plants. I am getting into pot stacking to get some hight. I like the forms. I also have some weeping nolinas from a collector of Mnorthern mexican plants .