To be fair, I didn't hold out a vast amount of hope. I have a LOT of the not too dissimilar hemp agrimony (eupatorium cannabinum) growing on the edge of my wood...in the drainage ditches.

However Jay, I can do 2 foot any day of the week - I want a coupla giants. I do have a large gypsophila paniculata and oenothera sinuosa to provide frothy white flowers but I wanted something a bit more...stolid. Perhaps I really should look again at hydrangea paniculata again...

If you want something large and impressive what about Verbesina virginica? It's water needs are low. It's a weedy self seeder here. I doubt it gets cold enough there to enjoy the ice sculptures that flow from the base of the stem in winter. My plant is 8-9 ft. tall. The flowers aren't frothy though.

mmm, I have grown verbesina enceliades before. I think I can probably get my hands on seeds as this is one of the better late summer annuals for me. Not sure about sourcing some of the more obscure US natives. Trying to get away from the eternal annual slog and keep a few areas separate from my neighbours with large(ish) dense(ish) plants about head height.

oooh, I do have liatris pycnostachys seeds on order. I am trying to sort out another dry bed in the allotment, featuring grey leaved desert-y plants (and having another go-round with eremurus) so also looking at a sparse but architectural theme. Will be planting the oenothera and rather nice silver leafed ballota, as well as a coupla of nteresting plants I sowed this summer to go in the aforementioned bed (uruspermum dalechampii and fibigia clypeata). Possibly some penstemon too. and epilobium? And my new salvia Phyllis Fancy. Still a bit vague as I find designing and planning (for myself) to be quite difficult.

I'd love to see your list of obscure NA plants just to see how difficult they would be to source. The Cowpen Daisy, Verbesina enceliouloides, how did they do for you? They are native to our southwest, and scattered seeds germinate very late here, when the temperatures are higher. By then everything else is far ahead of them and shading them out. And a very small percentage return from seed. Im sure I scattered well over a thousand seeds and only 2 vollunteers showed up. Im sure they are probably weedy down in Oklahoma and Texas. The larger perennial Verbesina virginica and alternifolia are the opposite. They germinate early, and for every hundred seeds they drop, it seems like a hundred thousand vollunteers show up. They can reach a meter tall, and bloom in their first year from seed, and they will continue to get taller each year. My Verbesina virginica is about 9 ft. tall this year. It would make the prefect barrier for your personal gardening space. It stands very formidable, staunch and erect. They are very weedy for me here, so it bothers me to deadhead them and deny the birds their treats, but it takes far too much time and effort to dig out all the numerous villunteers. The goldfinches have gotten greedy and are purposely destroying many of the flower buds on my Silphium, so they can harvest fewer, but plumper seeds. They are creating an eyesore. There are a ton of Silphium just down the street at a local preserve, where they can go eat. Location does matter. There are several other Verbesina species here in the states, and there may be some similar western species that prefer a dryer evironment. One unusual trait many of them have is they can have alternate or opposite foliage. I'm growing a Verbesina aternifolia plant that has opposite foliage. You have to key it out by looking at the involucre bracts. I've never heard of some of those species you mentioned, I'll have to look them up. I also grow the Bush's Poppy Mallow, Callirhoe bushii. I do like the fact that I can see the flowers much easier than those of C. involucrata. Mine is becoming weedy, and it must shoot ballistic seeds in the Herb Robert style, because the vollunteers are quite a distance from the parent plants.

Liatris pycnostachya, this species really came to my attention a couple months ago, when I saw it growing in a restored prairie. It seemed like the surrounding tall grasses really helped make them pop. I just bought 2 plants at a pop-up sale, and I have 5 bareroot plants ordered. I plan on surrounding mine with Little Bluestem grass. The grass also makes them still look great after they finish blooming, because they are an architectural element within the grass, and they harmonize together in their movements.

Verbesina virginica, Frostweed. I love the odd, missing petal look. The flowers are very soothing to behold. Not a great picture.

I am always a bit conflicted about the idea of natives, Jay. Not least because we in the UK have the most diminished flora and fauna set in the entire european continent - a result of glaciation and island isolation. If we were to concentrate on natives (or wildflowers as we usually refer to them) our choices would be drastically diminished. Although, having said this, I do, and always have grown plants which have utility for wildlife. There are no frilly double flowered sterile plants in my gardens anywhere...but, that's about as far as I will go down any purity pathway (iykwim).

Cowpen daisy - yes indeed, this flowered copiously, but not until October so I didn't bother saving seed for another go-round. Originally came from a former Okie gardenwebber. Some Texan plants do well for me - I have a couple of books by the Wachowskis (or something like - can't quite see the books and don't want to go rummaging). I also grow a number of Californians, especially annuals such as stylomecon and platystemon and such. As it happens, one of my main source for seeds is a transplanted US native - Derry Watkins, who owns Special Plants nursery and always has a generous selection of US plants. For example, bigelowia nutallii, eryngium yuccifolium, hedysarum borealis, off the top of my head which I am currently growing...along with quite a few penstemons. But I also grow quite a few Chilean and other SA plants as well as a selection of Cape flora.

I did sow schizachrium but had a miserable fail - dunno where I went wrong but suspect the seeds did not really enjoy the fridge stratification. Have had no trouble with muhlenbergia capillaris and reverchonii but little bluestem eludes me so far. Might just buy a plant and save my own seed.

Can only find very spendy VV seeds on Etsy (which I tend to avoid) - do you fancy sending me some - can paypal you the cost of postage? I got some callirhoe from Danny recently so I don't think sending seeds across the Atlantic is an issue to stress about.

"...but I really struggle to grow large robust perennials such as eupatorium."

Why? You're wording implies it is something about the size that you're struggling with -- so I don't get it, unless you don't have the space for the giants.

I have multiple Eupatorium, and they're all fabulous. I have the "Joe Pye" types and common boneset (E. perfoliatum). When I first introduced boneset into the garden, someone on the board made a comment that it will attract every pollinator known to the field of entomology, and boy were they right! It vibrates with all sorts of buzzers, giant, large, small, and minute, so it should be in every garden IMO. It's not a giant -- maybe 3-4' tall -- but seems quite easy to grow. I have a clump in full one, and one in part-shade, both are doing well, but the one in full sun has grown more vigorously; however, that may also be due to the fact that the part-shade beds doesn't get watered much, or maybe a combination of the two factors, IDK. But it does fine.

The Joe Pye's are always show-stoppers. They're stately and command attention, quite handsome all season and a good backbone plant, but the show really starts mid-August with those huge, showy flowerheads. Bees flock to them, and butterflies quite like them, too.

Have you considered ironweed? I have Missouri ironweed (Vernonia missurica) -- now here's a giant plant for you. It gets so tall for me it almost touches the bottom of the gutters -- maybe 8' or so -- so I trim it back mid-summer to keep it around 6' or so. The flower color is luscious flower color, a rich magenta-purple that is glorious against a clear autumn sky. Another pollinator pit-stop. (Edited: I made a boo-boo, I have Vernonia noveboracensis [New York ironweed], not V. missurica).

Also have a different type of ironweed, but of the top of my head I can't remember if it's "Southern Cross" or "Iron Butterfly". Same rich flower color, but foliage and growth habit is completely different than V. noveboracensis, this one has needle-like foliage and is compact at around 3-4'. It's okay, but I don't think I like it enough to seek out another one. It needs placement against coarse foliage to show to best effect IMO.

ETA: Don't forget about Rudbeckia ‘Herbstonne’ -- talk about a glorious fall bloomer...

Pics of ironweed and Joe Pye against the house, for scale -- zebra grass on the left, ironweed in the middle, Joe Pye in bloom on the right. These are planted here so I can see them out the window, the ground slopes down on this side of the house. (pardon the spent culver's root spires peeking through on the right -- haven't had time to tidy things up)

Here's boneset in the foreground, and you can see in comparison the height of the ironweed in the background off to the side of the window (there's other tall plants there for balance, they're just not in the pic):

Close-up of boneset flowers. My camera is cr*ppy so it didn't capture the insects, but when I walked up to it to get the pic it was swarming with pollinators:

It isn't size limitations,mxk3. it is the soil I grow in (very lean, stony,sandy), in full sun, in the driest part of the UK, and an often lashing wind on a very open site. Anything with lush foliage just cannot stay the course of a summer despite my attempts at windbreaks...and with watering restrictions in play, things like vernonia, rudbeckia, eupatoriums, phlox are hopeless dreams. I can grow large...but plants tend to have attenuated small leaves (althea cannabina)...or huge water storage organs like taproots and tubers...and even then, it can be a real struggle to establish large leafy plants. I grow quite a few roses...but only once-blooming species or ramblers which slip into a summer dormancy...or I can grow Australian or South African plants with tough silvery leaves (astelia, callistemon). Plants such as rudbeckia start out OK but by late June, they are beginning to suffer from powdery mildew or fail to hang onto flowers if they manage to bloom at all. I could, I guess, spend a lot of £££ and effort in soil improvers - manure is much harder to come by since so much pasturage has been treated with trichlopyr and even composting like crazy doesn't really do much to alter the composition of my soil or exigencies of the climate.

I do have rudbeckia Herbstonne and this anomalous wet summer, it is not exactly stellar but not shrivelled either...but I don't want to keep battling nature, carrying cans of water up and down the plot...but I do still crave a few lush varieties and live in optimistic hope. I tried veronicastrum this year but will be grubbing it out cos it is a pathetic, struggling little specimen.

OTOH, bloody buddleja grows like a mad rampant weed.

I think the size issue has more to do with the plant's water needs. Eutrochium fistulosum prefers wet to moist soil. I had no idea that Vernonia missurica could grow so tall. I have a few of them and they've only grew to 4 ft. on single stems that always flop. Iron Butterfly is a cultivar of Vernonia lettermannii. I'd be happy to send you seeds Rosa. I've sent seeds to friends in the UK before.

Jay - apologies, I stand corrected. After reading your post, I looked in the catalog where I got them from, and the ironweed are not V. missurica, they are V. noveboracensis (New York ironweed). ACK!

Mxk3, I grow noveboracensis too. It gets so tall that I clip it back I clipped it back at least 3 times last year and it still grew to 5 feet and bloomed. It's growing right next to my Dwarf Fragrant False Indigo, Amorpha nana, and the Amorpha has never bloomed yet. Apparantly Amporpha nana takes a few years to flower, same as Leadplant. I like the multiple stems that noveboracensis has. I have 1 Boneset plant that showed up in the garden mysteriously last year, and it bloomed this year. Late Boneset, Eupatorium serotinum, is common around here and I let a few of the wind spread volkunteers stay and flower. I also grow 2 species of Joe Pye Weed. Eutrochium purpureum and Eutrochium maculatum. The Purple Joe Pye is doing well in dappled sun. The maculatum wasn't doing well in full sun, even though I dilligently kept it moist, so I moved the 2 maculatum plants I had to a shadier spot. They haven't responded with vigorous growth since being transplanted, so I will be monitoring them next year. Ive tried starting False Boneset, Brickellia eupatorioides a couple times from seed with no luck. Brickellia is a western genus with many species having Baccharis type, unappealing flowers, but B. eupatorioides and Brickellia cordifolia have very showy flowers. White Snakeroot has similar flossy flowers, but it's such an agressive, weedy seeder that it's not allowed on my property. Down in the south about zone 7 and warmer they have the Climbing Hemp Vine, with flossy Eupatorium-like blooms. Ive been wanting to grow the Mexican Dream Herb, Calea ternifolia, but I think both batches of seeds that I ordered weren't viable. The flowers seem to fit in with the Asteraceae tribe Eupatorieae, but Calea is actually in the Helianthus tribe. Another beautiful Verbesina species is Verbesina walteri. It has globe flowers with no ray petals. It needs a warmer climate like about zone 7 and warmer. It's impossible to source seeds or plants, but I'm pretty sure I can get seeds from southern friends.

Mikania scandens, Climbing Hemp Vine

Asteraceae Tribe Eupatorieae, 2,000 species.

Brickellia eupatorioides. False Boneset

Asteraceae Tribe Eupatorieae

Brickellia cordifolia, Flyr's Nemesis, Flyr's Bricklebush

Asteraceae Tribe Eupatorieae

Calea ternifolia, Calea zacatechichi, Mexican Dream Herb.

Asteraceae Tribe Heliantheae, 2,500 species.

Verbesina walteri, Carolina Crownbeard

Asteraceae Tribe Heliantheae

Verbesina walteri, Carolina Crownbeard

Asteraceae Tribe Heliantheae.

Eupatorium serotinum, Late Boneset

Asteraceae Tribe Eupatorieae

My Vernonia noveboracensis 2022.

New York Ironweed.

Asteraceae Tribe Vernonieae, 1,300 species.

pffft, come to my senses and bought a pistaca lentiscus and some digger's speedwell (parahebe perforata, along with my salvia trawl, as I finally submitted a long overdue invoice for garden work.

I am normally a bit scathing about people who persist, in the face of numerous obstructions, in growing wholly unsuitable plants (and then whining about their miserable gardens). Mea culpa - I am not immune to inappropriate plant desire, either. Even so, East Anglia is not, and never could be, some outpost of eastern USA or, for that matter, the damply acidic southern tip of my own island. Moreover, struggling plants never look good so even making wild promises to be more effortful with soil husbandry and irrigation is not going to create a harmonious, healthy garden.

Every so often though, especially when being seduced by photos on the interweb, I lose all perspective.