Hostas are most wonderful. And tough as nails. I love 'em.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...5c2eb4d_4k.jpgAnole by J Solo, on Flickr

hi hibiscus...good morning

Lovely. For the past ten or so years, each year I dragged (read: had husband drag) four tropical hibiscus...hibiscii :) ... into the basement. Drag back out each spring. By the time they'd recover and start blooming it would usually be latter part of July or August.

I decided this year to quit, cease, and desist. Too much work for too little result. All four stayed outside, plus a mandevilla vine. We'll see how I feel about that when spring arrives.

yikes!! good luck with that...i love all those plants but i have ZERO experience with the cold....

hopefully they will prefer the feel of the actual seasonal shift, not die, and come back in spring faster

I assure you they won’t be back. This is Kansas, dude!

Sad face.

I was trying to be optimistic, hopelessly and ignorantly optimistic lol

Hopelessly optimistic is a beautiful way to go through life. And rather unrealistic for a tropical plant in zone 6. Here in these parts, we call those kind of plants annuals, unless we have a greenhouse. :biggrin:

Late to the party. Here's a few. I have a thing for trees.

My ornipets on the west bank.
View from kitchen window hosta guardian angel with Caryopteris snow fairy.
Siberian Iris along greenhouse (Annabelle's in back aren't blooming yet).
Stewartia in flower.
Epaulette tree in flower.
Bottlebrush buckeye flowers.
Ornipet 'American West.'

My garden is going to live on in KS w Water Witchin.

Welp, time to start getting some spring in the air. Here's some Dolly Daffodils...

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...um/Daff_1_.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...um/Daff_2_.JPG

WW, those are stunning
Dolly- that Ornipet and bottlebrush are also quite amazing

Ok. I'm going to look for something flowering here. But, it's only 43f so maybe, maybe not. You did a masterful job planting those. Didn't I dump about a thousand on you?

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TY, DC. I'm getting older and it chills my bones to imagine what will happen to our landscape when the younger generation takes over. Been seeing too much property disrespect around here lately. Last Lent I had to give up driving past the highway neighbors because I had such negative thoughts.

Thanks DC... but I just planted 'em. Dolly was the one with the good taste who gave me a few. Okay, a couple dozen.... okay, half a grocery sack maybe. :biggrin:

And yes, that bottlebrush is super. When is mine gonna bloom Dolly? It grows soooo sloooooow!

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Just depends on the particular younger generation individuals. Younger daughter lives on a street where each and every house has amazing gardens. And they started up a "community garden" on an empty lot a couple of blocks from their house.

I do agree that most these days aren't as in touch with the earth as they used to be. Perhaps some longer enforced stay home orders will make folks look around their yard and decide to DO something instead of just stick their nose into the nearest electronic device. This is a PSA from an occasionally crabby old lady. :biggrin:

while i aint no spring chicken, I am 37 and my almost 4 year old daughter has her own garden, knows you don't pick flowers (except for her periwinkle bush) and can ID about a half dozen bird....

i think the disconnect you see is the unfortunate by product of the suburbs...people with a largely urban mind set who are relocated to the largely NOT urban areas...that and any of us agrarian types live there (suburbs) too because we need proximity to the cities, usually for work. if you want to learn more google "wagon Wheel" communities and spread. people followed the train lines in the past....now we can drive where we please


so don't lose all hope for the future!!! we CAN keep it green and flowering

I was trying to be kind and in trying to be kind I was not clear. People of the generation before us manicured their yards, cared for their properties. The younger people that have bought these lower-priced properties, because they're older homes, don't take care of them: engines in the trees, junk in the yards, broken windows things like that. You would probably not want to live next door to that either. And I don't want to broad-brush this topic, because there are many people who do take excellent care of their belongings. We are not so fortunate.

i can certainly relate to that...it seems that the concepts of civility, kindness and accountability are thinning more and more these days....accountability is a big part of the pride in personal appearance and the same goes for the property...

I absolutely adore Lupines. I lived in Portland, Oregon for about three years, and the climate there is perfect for them. I had seen them in pictures, but never in person and I was just stunned. The plants were much bigger than I had imagined they would be, like three or four feet tall, and the flower spikes were two or three feet tall, with all the flowers open at once. It was just breathtaking. Sadly, in Texas it is much too hot for them and I wouldn't even attempt to grow them (although we do have Texas bluebonnets in the spring, which has a similar look, but they are quite small). They came in every color you could imagine. I didn't love living in Portland. The weather was cold and rainy, even during the summer, but the Lupines everywhere almost made up for it. Our winters are mild, I wonder if maybe I planted the seeds or young plants in the fall, that would give them enough time to grow over winter and then bloom before that awful Texas heat creeps in. Maybe I'll try that. The heat would kill them and they would not be perennial, but it might be worth a try.

Try Select Seeds, I ordered some from them this spring. They grow wild in the Indiana Dunes but, only a small patch.

I think you're right that younger people today aren't as in touch with the planet as past generations. I am a millennial, but just barely (I was bore in '82, so I just barely made the cut), but I also know of a lot of my friends my age who are into gardening, keep up their houses and lawns, and love planting things and watching them grow. I don't know about the millennials that came after me, but the ones I know aren't the way some of you are describing them. Maybe they're just young, and as they mature, they'll find new interests that don't involve an iPhone, and maybe some of them will discover gardening. We can always hope. I think every generation has the same complaints about the generation that came after them. I think it's just part of getting older and seeing the world change. The younger generations might not turn out to be so bad after all once they've matured a little.

JScott... I will so respond to this, but not right now, and perhaps move to a different thread so this one isn’t hijacked.

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This particular piece of the pie is close and dear to my heart

Feel free to send me a private message, or start a new thread. Whatever you are most comfortable with. I'd be happy to discuss this further with you.

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We had that everywhere in Oklahoma. We called it purple heart, and it's a great ground cover, tho it can get a little invasive. I used to sell it at my little garden shop when I still lived in Oklahoma. I love the little pink flowers. It's a great plant if you can keep it under control.

All of them!!! But especially Orchids, Orchids, Orchids, Orchids and Orchids (I am something of a monomaniac).

Now I will add something that is actually relevant to this thread. Here is one of my favorite hybrid tea roses. This one is called Midas Touch. It holds its color well even in the heat, and it always has lots of flowers. They last a long time too, and are great for cutting, although it tends to produce multiple buds at the end of each stem, so if you want a tall stem with a single bloom, you have to pinch back some of the buds while they're still small so that there's only one left on the stem. It is definitely my favorite yellow. The spring blooms are definitely the best, but it blooms again in late summer too. I've even had blooms on that rose as late as December. The other flower is what I call an African Daisy. I don't know what other names it may go by. It comes in a variety of colors, but this one and the steel blue one are my two favorites.

Edit:I found a picture of the steel blue African daisies I love so much, and i finally occurred to me what else we used to call them, which is Osteospermum. I haven't tried them here in Texas yet. In Oklahoma, they tended to languish a little in the hottest pert of the summer, but in the fall when the weather would start to cool off, they would just go crazy. It gets much hotter in Texas, so it's possible the heat in August may kill them, but maybe it won't, and maybe I'll get lots of blooms in the fall. I think I'll give them a shot in my garden this year and see what happens.

DC, your purple friend: That's an annual here. I used to sell it also, as a filler it spiller for containers. It's in the Tradescantia family, I believe.

Lovely rises, JScott. They don't do well in our sand.

My grandma always grew that purple plant as a houseplant. Called it Moses in the Boat. And another purple stripey plant she called Wandering Jew. Grew up before I realized there were other names for them. She was a staunch Baptist, so perhaps thus the names?

Must go find last year's picture of my favorite rose. It hasn't done well last two winters, and is looking pretty raggedy this year. It's beautiful, in my opinion, but doesn't care for my climate.

Inn my garden shop in Oklahoma, we sold that purple heart like crazy. Couldn't keep it in stock. It's great for mixed planters because it spills down over the side, and it's a good ground cover. It is technically not supposed to be perennial in Oklahoma (zone 7), but I had a lot of people who came in and said that theirs came back every year, and could be a little invasive, so it's definitely a tough plant.

I adore lilies in the garden. I have a bit of an issue with lily beetle which requires constant vigilance in spring and early summer. But, I'm rewarded for it later in the year. They are just coming up now :D

Are those ornipets? I have mostly those. No Lily beetles (yet) but I do have trouble with stalk borers. I used to use systemic Rose food for them which work quite well, then I had to stop using it because it was bad for the pollinators. Now I try to cut them out and squash them.

Yes they are Orienpets here they get called tree lilies as they grow to about 9 feet supposedly. I've had about 7 feet of growth - they do smell amazing. Thankfully stem borers aren't present here.

Planted three today, "Big Brother."

That is the most scented plant in my garden - you can smell it from tens of yards away. It has massive blooms too - I find it needs stacked, but that's because it is wet and windy here even in summer.

I have to stake them all. One area has become shadier, so they lean, another area is on a bank, and in the third area, they must be 7' tall. In fact, I need more metal stakes. Since most areas of my garden has become shadier, I rely on Lilies and hydrangeas for color; hostas for texture. Your border is very artfully planted.

you know, it's funny,,,the old saying about the grass being greener...i think they missed the mark.

it is that the plants that CANT grow on myside of the fence (planet) are so interesting to me!!

I, on the other hand, never envy living in Florida. I've often said I'd have to have an affair with the Orkin man (he probably doesn't look like the guy in the commercials.)

we do have all manner of creepy and crawly BUT there is a desensitizing that occurs when you spend your youth here...

For example. at night and with a bright head lamp, the grass in my yard looks like it is covered in dew....nope those are insect and arachnid eyes....they reflect in prism just like water....shudder.

I make it a habit to never think about nighttime when i lay in the grass during the day and NEVER lay on the bare ground at night :rofl: that guy is not laughing...stop drop and roll off the spiders

Love bouganvilleas, have 9 different colours, including a tri coloured one.
When I took a cutting off the parent, I wrapped the cutting in wet newspaper and drove 500 km to get home and plant it. Incidentally, the parent is only pale pink and lives in savannah type country...And, the world’s biggest sapphire deposit.
Cheers, Bobj.

Beautiful. Here we have to grow them inside a conservatory.

Love bouganvilla. Used to buy a cheapy every year, just to have them bloom. Could never winter over and have them bloom a second year. Now I don't waste my money, and just enjoy the blooms at the nursery, or any park that has a big greenhouse or conservatory.

Where I live, the whitsunday region, bouganvilleas are just about everywhere, especially old farm areas and, mostly the purple coloured ones.
Cheers, Bobj.

I have mine in pots along the eastern facing wall.
Cheers, Bobj.

I love bougies!! I have a white and a bonsai pink. They are EVERYWHERE around here.

Few people realize that they are a vine. I have seen amazing things done with time and patience.