I am a collector trying to be more of a drifter. The advantage of collecting for awhile is that it is fun and I have learned a lot about what grows well and doesn't, and in my own yard, which does not follow all the rules and what may be written about the plants; plus many that I thought I would like, I don't, and vice versa. So while I am now having to re-organize some areas, if I had started out with drifts or masses, I would have used the wrong drifts and had to re-do things anyway. One drift that is not working out is Happy Returns daylily. It was intended to provide movement and repetition and all that throughout areas that differed a bit in sun and moisture conditions. It may be happy, but is not returning much, at least not with whatever water and fertilizer I am giving it presently. Maybe a garden designer would not have made any mistakes, but I doubt would have been able to predict which plants would catch my fancy or not or turn out to have the right maintenance requirements--since maintenance issues have also not always turned out as anticipated from descriptions. However, I would now be able to work much better with a designer than I would have 10 or 20 yrs ago. I still tend to buy a couple of something, but am more likely to say, if you earn your keep, I'll multiply you. I have paid more attention to proportion and distance. I have a front corner bed I am trying to design/develop--since it is enjoyed mostly either from inside, or if outside but still from a distance, or I drive by it and view from car, I can tell that I need large masses/more dramatic stuff to be visible; skip the tiny leaf details and delicate combinations. Similarly, I have determined to simplify and mass/drift more in some front foundation plantings. OTOH, near a patio where I sit and look at a garden spot closeup, I love various small vignettes that are produced by some of my collecting and I enjoy trying to think of new ones to try.

I just saw ICY DRIFT for the first time, just now. YOWZA! Not a bloom in sight, yet, but who cares! The foliage is GORGEOUS!!!!! A bright, happy yellow-green, and so packed with tiny leaves you couldn't see the canes. Icy Drift was in the same section with all the other groundcover roses at Madison (Mississippi) Garden Center, and there was no comparison. If the foliage stays anywhere near that nice, Icy Drift is up there with Mermaid and New Dawn as one of the greatest of the greats. I'd love to know how it looks after a year or two. I HAVE grown Peach Drift, when we lived in Madison before, and it seemed happier in the pots than once I (finally, after years of procrastination) got it into the ground. Still, they persist after seven years, being given sporadic care by the busy young surgeons who bought the house. We stopped by last week, before closing on our new Mississippi home, and the Peach Drifts I planted were looking happy - already leafed-out, with bronzy/maroon new growth: still small, though. Their new owners like them pretty well. Peach Drift continually sends up short blooming canes with showy clusters, in a delectable color range: basically, all the colors you'd see on ripening peaches. Once they start blooming, they continue up to the first frost. The ones I planted never attained the 'three-high/four-wide mound' size/shape I'd hoped for. But that may be my lack of soil amendment, or shortcomings in subsequent care. In Mississippi at least, Peach Drift tolerates a good bit of shade, and keeps right on blooming. Does not defoliate in the dead of Summer, and is semi-evergreen in Winter. I'm hoping Icy Drift will do the same. Has anyone down South grown Icy Drift for a few years? I'm tempted to send the truck by, to pick up every one the Garden Center has. But I'd like to know how the plant evolves over time. I'm thinking of planting a drift of Icy Drift beneath the sunny side of a clump of 'Shoal Creek' Vitex Agnus Castus (thank heavens the estate's last owners compiled a comprehensive set of books on the plantings... and the soil amendments... and the locations of the French drains: so I know exactly which cultivars I have of EVERYTHING, down to the Green Mountain Boxwoods). Anyway, I find blue to be cold and disturbing as a flower color, and white blossoms would be too cold, without the yellow-green foliage I saw today on Icy Drift. Can anyone tell me if the foliage continues to lean toward 'Lime', rather than maturing to a straight-up standard green?

We mass-planted Peach, Coral, Apricot, Sweet and White in our garden for landscaping use a few years back. They have been bulletproof in terms of performance reliability, foliage disease resistance, heat & cold tolerance. Peach has the most handsome foliage and the first to bloom, coral has the most dwarf form after six years in ground, apricot is similar to peach but paler green leaves, and sweet/white are the tallest and their blooms come in the last. They all are beautiful in each’s own way and offer great impacts in the various locations we assigned them. By the way, White’s bloom form is the most double, has that old garden rose look.

Both of these roses are very short, 2 ft tall at most. They are meant to be used as ground cover roses not really as hedges. The flower carpet rose has more petals than the drift rose does but they are both repeat bloomers so should bloom all season long in flushes.