Looking back...

[barleychown]

Looking back over the last growing season:

Which plant did the best for you?

Which plant suprised you?

Which plants made the best color combos for you?

Which plants share space well for you?

[Triss]

Very good topic.

My Lychnis (Rose Champion) did the best for me and far exceeded any expectations I had for them.  It will be a plant in my garden for years to come.

Sweet William was the biggest surprise for me, I had no idea I was going to get so many colors out of them.

All of my succulents did well together and made the path look nice,  and they all bloomed well for me and looked nice together with the various shades of green and different shapes of the leaves.  And they also share the same space well.

[christy]

yep, good topic!
id have to say my cosmos, they did well this year, i had em all planed out were i was gonna plant what, then lost my markers so i ended up mixing em n was surprized at how well they looked all mixed up,  n they share space with my spring bulbs very well :}

[barleychown]

I just realized I never answered for myself.

I was most impressed with the "keys of heaven" I planted. Darn thing was one of the first to start blooming this spring, and still hasn't quit.

The plant (or plants) that suprised me were the creeping thyme I planted the front "lawn" with...it has almost fully filled in in less that a year!


I really liked the whole front's color combo's, except the red. I will be moving those plants to the back yard.

[patches]

Sarah, I would love to see a picture of your 'Creeping Thyme'.

I guess my Echinacea and Shasta daisies were the plants I was most pleased with this summer. 

Probably my best color combination was the pink and white garden 'Phlox' because they put on the best show this year.  I was really pleased with 'David' because I had no mildew problem with it.  Guess it really is mildew resistent.

My ferns and Coral Bells were probably my biggest surprise since they filled in my shade garden perfectly this year and I didn't think they would grow as big as they did in just a year.  I would have to say the 'Autumn Fern' is definitely my favorite.

[Patty S]

Patti, There are pics of Sarah's Thyme "lawn" in The Grass IS greener... (in someone else's yard!), starting at post # 3, then in posts #7, 8 & 11. Her yard is absolutely to die for!

I can't really single out any one plant that did "the best" in my gardens, cuz this was the most fantastic gardening year I've had so far!   I think that the plant that surprised me most, might have been my Tiger Lilies, which were new for me this year... there were more than I thought I had, they were taller than I expected them to be, they kept coming on & they were fantabulous!  

Color combos... hmmm Offhand, I think it would be the yellow California Poppies that bloomed among the baby blue Nigella this spring, then came back to team up with the purple flowers of my Ice Plants, just last week.

Space sharing? Well... the weeds did very well sharing garden beds, but I guess the best sharing of all happened in my veggie garden, where I had 4 different kinds of melons, a couple hundred strawberry plants, numerous cucumber plants, string beans, snow peas, beets, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions & a Hollyhock... sharing 240 square feet! 

Some people wait & take up golf when they retire... I took up flower gardening. I should have started LOTS sooner, cuz I had no idea what I was missing!

[patches]

Thanks, Patty, I like that color much better than the red "Creeping Thyme' I've always seen around here. 

[duh]

Which plant did the best for you?  I'd have to say it was the Burgandy Mum in the front container. 

Which plant suprised you?  The Hosta that got dug up for a week and still managed to survive and even bloom.  That's one survivor plant.

Which plants made the best color combos for you?  I didn't have a good color combo this year.  I'd hoped that the combination of the really red short zinnias and the candy stripe zinnia would be good but it just didn't work out at all well.

Which plants share space well for you?  This would have to be the zinnia and the horseradish. 

[patches]

Looking back, I would have to say that my Garden Phlox did the best as far as showy, and length of bloom.  They never semed to end.   

There were a lot of disappointments this year, but nothing the fault of the flowers.  It was just the lousy weather we were getting here.