Some nice not-too-tall plants for the front are the Stella d'oro
daylilly, balloon flower (purple), and lavender (has to be replaced
every 4-6 yrs because it gets woody and straggly looking). Taller
additions to consider: miniature roses--I have a couple dozen and love
them; they can get 2-3 feet tall and don't need as much spraying for
disease as regular roses; coneflowers, shasta daisies and iris. A nice
ground cover is Creeping Jenny, the leaves look bright yellow in the
sun, or a low-growing creeping sedum. If you feel like digging some
weekend, give me a call (336-364-4760) and you can come out and get some
pieces or seeds of what I have. I pick up almost dead miniature roses on
sale for $3-4 each in the spring at places like Wal-Mart (what's left
after Valentine's day or Easter I guess) and nurse them back to health
on the back deck before planting them out in the garden. Or you can get
great plants for good prices at the Raleigh farmer's market.

Good luck!!
Roxanne



Margaret Lillard wrote:
Well, I am whipped ...

Got myself a cubic yard of topsoil from the local pile o' dirt men and
finally filled in my new raised bed (and have a little left over for
future projects, though it was only through the blessed intervention of
my neighbor that I finally got it all off the truck -- RSI and general
feebleness, you know... but the tale of toting dirt for another day).

So now I have a nice flower bed that wraps partway around my deck.
Imagine a slightly stretched-out sans-serif C, with lovely healthy
forsythia dominating the short legs and a new-ish jasmine on a trellis
in the middle of the long side.

What would you plant?

I definitely want various salvia in some of it -- I have bird feeders in
the back yard and I want to attract more hummers as well as butterflies.
The salvia, when they grow tall, will be a nice screen along the edge of
the deck.

But I don't want to do just salvia, and I don't want only tall plants.
I'm a little stumped about what to put toward the front of the bed that
will complement the taller plants but not overwhelm the jasmine, which
is still pretty short at this stage.

I realize it's hard to suggest anything without seeing the landscape --
if I can get a picture, I'll post it somewhere. For now, I'm interested
in the fruits of brainstorming by more experienced gardeners than I.

Oh, and it's mostly sunny, the soil's a tad on the clay-ey side but I'm
going to stir in some mulch, and I'd prefer perennials.

MAL