About me: I have way more garden than I ought to have, on my 1/5 acre urban yard in an old Boston suburb. I have been busy figuring out how to have a garden of delight, and not just shrubs, in the vicinity of maples and without continuous watering, as we have summer water shortages. Native plants and container gardening are the solutions I have hit on, and after 10 years of experimenting I have found some real solutions (listed below).
Here are some plants that perform well for me in full- and part-sun maple-rooty summer-dry soil that I never water after establishment and that I mulch very thinly so as not to encourage more maple roots. These plants are both tough and beautiful and perform unusually well in lousy conditions adn total neglect.
* Prairie aster: Gets tall but takes to pruning, gorgeous big starry flowers in fall, seeds aroud agreeably in really awful site.* Aster laevis: ditto.* Solidago rigida "Fireworks": Appears to grow anywhere and looks good, surprisingly tolerates light shading.* Hemerocallis fulva, common orange daylily: This plant will grow in places where you can't get a shovel in the ground for all the roots or in dry shade or in sandy sterile soil. Not just grow, but look good and flower too. A miracle plant for the maple-afflicted in urban settings. It's invasive in good sites but well-behaved in lousy sites.* Boltonia asteroides: Have some growing in practically sterile soil that gets salt in the winter. * Helianthus "Lemon Queen": Makes big bush if not pruned, covered in small yellow flowers in fall. Good for summer screening.* Miniature bearded German iris* Rubus odoratus, flowering raspberry: Not the thorny cultivated type but a woodlander with big light green star-shaped leaves on arching branches. Grows very well in dry shade in worst possible maple rooty situation. Love it for providing substantial foliage.
Of course, I grow many other tough plants, but they won't take the dryness and poor soil like these will.
My zone is: z6MA
Here are some plants that perform well for me in full- and part-sun maple-rooty summer-dry soil that I never water after establishment and that I mulch very thinly so as not to encourage more maple roots. These plants are both tough and beautiful and perform unusually well in lousy conditions adn total neglect.
* Prairie aster: Gets tall but takes to pruning, gorgeous big starry flowers in fall, seeds aroud agreeably in really awful site.* Aster laevis: ditto.* Solidago rigida "Fireworks": Appears to grow anywhere and looks good, surprisingly tolerates light shading.* Hemerocallis fulva, common orange daylily: This plant will grow in places where you can't get a shovel in the ground for all the roots or in dry shade or in sandy sterile soil. Not just grow, but look good and flower too. A miracle plant for the maple-afflicted in urban settings. It's invasive in good sites but well-behaved in lousy sites.* Boltonia asteroides: Have some growing in practically sterile soil that gets salt in the winter. * Helianthus "Lemon Queen": Makes big bush if not pruned, covered in small yellow flowers in fall. Good for summer screening.* Miniature bearded German iris* Rubus odoratus, flowering raspberry: Not the thorny cultivated type but a woodlander with big light green star-shaped leaves on arching branches. Grows very well in dry shade in worst possible maple rooty situation. Love it for providing substantial foliage.
Of course, I grow many other tough plants, but they won't take the dryness and poor soil like these will.
My zone is: z6MA
GardenWeb Member: 2004-04-26