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hosenemesis

I have run out of room

hosenemesis
11 years ago

I am a frustrated gardener. I have all of these ideas for beautiful beds, but I have run out of room. Someone should invent a virtual reality game like Fantasy Football, but with plants. This is what I want today, after going to nurseries and driving past people's pretty yards.

I want a gold and purple-blue bed with sea statice, gold daylilies and coreopsis, Cosmos 'Bright Lights' and 'Recurring Dream' tall bearded iris. Golden arborvitae and Springtime Viburnum in the background. 'Crystal Palace' lobelia for groundcover.

I want a blue, yellow and white bed with a huge overgrown Cape Plumbago in the background, bright yellow roses like my Henry Fonda, the yellow iris 'That's All Folks' and the blue ones 'Cascadian Rhythm' and 'Victoria Falls,' blue Marguerite daisies, white Shasta or African daisies, and white and yellow yarrow. With dark green myrtle, and a twelve foot tall 'Heavenly Blue' morning glory teepee.

I want a pink, magenta, and peach bed filled with roses and pelargoniums. I want dark cerise-magenta roses like 'Zepherine Drouhin' and dark pink/red roses like Twilight Zone or Darcey Bussell mixed with pale pale pinks like Climbing Eden, with the dainty ivy geraniums in white and pink and dark cerise-magenta, and the big fat Martha Washington pelargoniums in peach. I want lots of magenta and white dianthus for ground cover and clear lovely peach roses like 'Heaven on Earth' and pale complicated roses like 'Ginger Syllabub' and 'Gloire de Dijon.'

What do you want today?

Renee

Comments (15)

  • wcgypsy
    11 years ago

    It's more fun to be creating something new than just maintaining what you've already created. What I've been prone to doing is just spreading out more and more, creating much more work than I can keep up with and demanding more of my water dollars.....
    Now I'm taking out large areas of plantings with the intention that this will either go to winter green / summer brown, or be planted totally with natives. My new vision / love would be with grass meadows...stipas...and I'm wondering if I will do away almost totally with what's been here for years now because I'm filled with the urge to create something new....our visions do change over time. My favorite purple / gold look is still the salvia leucantha with tagetes lemmonii. Long border with a few smaller accents thrown in. I'm still going for tough, drought tolerant for the large scale areas.

  • hoovb zone 9 sunset 23
    11 years ago

    What do you want today?

    I will assume you mean besides ice cream.

    I actually have room after pulling out a bunch of stuff. I wish I had some design talent so I could make it look really good.

  • gobluedjm 9/18 CA
    11 years ago

    You run out of room?...HA! Thats the funniest thing I've heard all day.
    Well I would love to have a maize n blue (google that you'll understand my screen name) garden but I had to settle for purple instead of blue. There are more true blues now than when I started.
    And course where I live had to stick with the cooler colors but have pops of red here and there to attract the hummers.

    I do have a cape plumbago but it dies back in the winter once frosted.

    So yes if I can have a maize and true blue garden today thats exactly what I want.

  • PRO
    Kaveh Maguire Garden Design
    11 years ago

    Make your house smaller to make room for more garden beds. :)

  • hosenemesis
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    I just removed this purple iris since it didn't quite fit in to my garden scheme. It would look nice with these plants, but I need room. Maybe I can show this to my neighbor... and point out how pretty it would look against their newly painted house.
    {{gwi:533409}}

  • peachymomo
    11 years ago

    How lovely! I like to make flower collages too, just to see what a color combo will look like.

    There are so many things I want in my garden *right now* that I'm working on, and other things organized into dream lists for maybe someday. Right now my top priority is completing the veg garden, I'm not done planting tomatoes and it's almost June, I kick myself every time I go out and see all the work I haven't done yet. But I also have a growing collection of baby antique roses in pots that are going to need a home once they are large enough to go into the ground - I know I want it to be an informal garden with curving gravel paths, rock lined beds, and billowy perennials like lavender and santa barbara daisies, but I'm not sure where or how large it will actually be. It's a design challenge I'm not even ready to think about yet.

    The satisfaction I get from turning a weedy or nondescript plot into a beautiful garden is unparallelled, and when I finish all of the projects I currently have on my list I think I will need to find friends and neighbors willing to let me create new gardens on their properties. It's an addiction I have no desire to curb or suppress ;oP

  • wcgypsy
    11 years ago

    I do wish I could make myself come at it from the design angle but, unfortunately I'm fueled by the 'have to have that plant' urge and I will fit it in somewhere. 'Somewhere' currently being in quite large pots...lol..

  • hosenemesis
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    I design and design and design, then fall in love with something and ruin the whole thing. Right now I have eight new irises. I have been wandering around trying to fit them in, with no luck. This means tearing out other plants and moving them to fit the irises in. So it takes me three weeks to create a spot for ONE rhizome. Yesterday I decided to move a dwarf myrtle two feet to the east. Two feet. Thank goodness irises are cheap. If I had the native plant or rose obsession I'd have a second mortgage by now.

  • wcgypsy
    11 years ago

    Mmm Hmmm...that's why I have about 50 irises in pots right now. I also went back to Rite Aid and got 5 more of the very large pots they have on sale for half off right now. I have some shrubby stuff that will be happy. They have more of those pots left..I got 10, I need more....lol..
    As I'm taking out more large beds, it doesn't mean I'll quit growing what I want. The rest of the property can be seasonal grass and the trees and natives and I'll have a large pot farm by the house....and I've discovered that, much like a nursery, I can put everything together in pots and they look okay, I don't have to worry about bed design....
    Years ago when we moved to Washington, we bought and rebuilt a 2 ton flatbed to haul all my plants with us. We're thinking of moving and I think the husband is getting edgy about all these things in large pots....lol..

  • akarinz
    11 years ago

    I want space to have an actual vegetable garden. Right now I mix my vegetables in with my flowers, but would love to have a dedicated space just for vegetables.

    I want more sun in my backyard. My neighbors on both sides of me and in the back all have tall trees that hang over my side of the property and block out a lot of sun.

    I also want more clematis growing and blooming amongst my flowers. My gardener chopped two of them down, thinking they were weeds last week :'-(

    Sorry - I guess I got on a tangent. I didn't realize how much I wanted.

  • Laurel Zito
    11 years ago

    I have been out of room for years. I just wait until something dies or does poorly before I add something new. Sometimes I give away a plant on craigs in the free section to make room for something new. You can use vertical space also making stacking type container trees or hang wood along a fence and put pot there. I saw this stuff at landscape shows.

  • wcgypsy
    11 years ago

    Sometimes running out of room is a good thing. It can be the only way of being controlled when you can't stop planting...lol...and acquiring plants. Left to my own devices, I would still just keep planting further and further out, but am making concessions to age and water bills..duh, have I already mentioned this before? Anyway, I'm digging/ potting / letting go large areas that will no longer be planted or watered. Does that stop me? Oh no....the day that I encountered the 10 gallon pots at Rite Aid on sale for half price, I bought 5...the next day I went back and bought 5 more, the next day I went back and bought 4 more, then yesterday I went back and got 4 more....you get the picture?...lol..the sale lasts two more days and they still have some...I will NOT get more. As it is, I'm finally out of potting mix and having to buy more peat now.
    Yep, hundreds of plants in pots...lol..I'm not out of room yet.....

  • chezron
    11 years ago

    I can so relate to this problem and the problem of wanting so many plants. I know how to design, but plant lust ALWAYS gets in the way.

  • wcgypsy
    11 years ago

    Yep.....there is a property close by that is done with White Iceberg Roses, Mexican Feather Grass and Crape Myrtles....ONLY. I love the look, but what would I do with all the other gazillion plants that I have to have?

  • kittymoonbeam
    11 years ago

    I want a roof I can plant on. I love grass covered cabins! Every roof should be a meadow!