GardenBanter.co.uk - Question about my heuchera

In article , "Barbara Yanus"
wrote:

Coral Bells? I don't think you need to have their crowns exposed. I have
several and none of mine are.

Bebra

NE PA
zone 6b

"Jen in Chicago" wrote in message
om...
I've just planted about 9 heuchera plants and 3 tiarellas (foam
flower) in the north side bed of my house. Do the heuchera need to
have their crowns exposed? HOw about the tiarella. The T seems to
be doing fine, but I just wanted to check about the heuchera.

TIA,
J in Chicago

The typical recommendation for alum root is to plant them as deeply as
possible & still have the rootcrown of stems exposed. There's nothing
special about it not wanting to be planted deeper than that -- more plants
would than wouldn't suffer if the lower stems were buried.

Some species of heuchera when rather old will have built up a woody crown
that sticks pretty far above the ground, & it would do no good to bury
that, as it's predominantly a dead part of the root. Such specimens
usually don't grow well but show many signs of old age, mainly poor
leafage or dead center. Such old woody clumps can be dug up, the
centermost bits discarded, &amp the younger edges replanted as deeply as
possible without covering the crown. It can take a couple years for the
saved bits to develop nicely, so it's not something that should be done
until tired old age is obvious.

Most heuchera are very winter hardy & keep part or all their leaves in
winter as a sort of self-mulching feature (on some the winter leaves turn
striking & odd colors before spring). But if grown in an area where it is
quite cold & the plant dies back to the ground, it may actually be
necessary to mulch completely over the bared part of the root or the root
will die during winter.

Though closely related I don't think tiarellas ever really develop a woody
center. Some of them spread by surface-creeping stems so I imagine they
would be very delicate in extremely cold winters & need mulching, but
where I live "bad" weather is almost never below 20 degrees F., & the
tiarellas don't need any special protection. In Chicago I imagine they'll
need winter mulching.

Newly planted Tiarellas establish more swiftly than newly planted
heucheras (depending on cultivar & species, but as a generality that's
so). If it has seemed to you that newly planted tiarellas are doing better
than newly planted heucheras, it's likely because heucheras are more
easily shocked & slower to recover. On the other hand, there are more
garden-critters that like to nibble on tiarellas, & tiarellas suffer more
from drying out. Once established the heucheras are often better, & the
coral bell types tend to be quicker to establish than the fancy-leaf types
that only have crummy little white sprays of flowers & are totally reliant
on leaf appearance to be successful. They're all of them all but
impossible to kill, but they don't invariably become as wonderfully leafy
as they were fresh from a greenhouse production line the day you bought
them, & can be a disappointment especially their first year getting
settled. I almost started hating a couple of my heucheras until their
third year, when finally they started to get really nice.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/