BBQ Banana Ligularia

Wow, I am loving this new-to-me ligularia!

I liked it before it bloomed with only the huge dark leaves:

But I am really wowed now with those bright flowers. They are pretty much the same color as Black -Eyed Susan blooms.

Loaded Crabapple Tree, Ligularia & Helenium 'Lollipop'

This branch is so heavily loaded that it hangs to the ground, making a nice frame for garden pics. :)

I am sure the birds will enjoy them soon.

The Ligularia is blooming.  I really enjoy this plant.

It is planted in a container, so each year I can move it around. I am enjoying it next to this wagon wheel.

 Right in the front I have Helenium 'Lollipop', another new purchase this year. 

I love the unusual form of this flower--tiny little eyeball with a wee frill of ruffled petals on the underside.  This flower is fully open. I think it's a great contrast to Ligularia's large coarse leaves and tall spiky blooms.  It needs to be planted in the front of a border to be appreciated. 

I usually cut down hosta blooms because they are  too tall and messy for my liking.  Since the deer ate dozens of my hostas, I don't have many to cut down this year. Somehow this one escaped the deer and I decided I like its flowers in front of the pink speedwell so I left them on.

Time to go outside to finish my weekend garden chores--mostly just weeding.

Happy gardening!

Ligularia -- The Rocket 2011

A few readers have asked me for more of the ligularia plant, so here a few shots from last night:

 Ligularia is a water hog---and I mean HOG. It must be watered daily or it sulks like crazy.  I have mine planted in a pot and inserted about half way into the ground. 

The next picture shows how big the canna leaves in containers behind the ligularia got during the two weeks of hot weather.

The leaves in front are "Wyoming'; the striped leaves behind are 'Tropicanna'.

I have no time to write more as I must get to work. But I did a post on Lugularia last year which you can read by clicking here.

I am linking to cottage floral Thursday. Have fun exploring the other gardens!

Let the Blooming Begin!

Finally, I have lots of new bloomers!  I don't even know where to begin. I will just pick a few to showcase for Blooming Tuesday as I know most of you don't want to see a dozen or more pictures today!

First I will show the lupine that I featured awhile back.  It turned out to be pink and quite lovely.

I have to say that this is one of my biggest and best lupine blooms.  I am doing the happy dance over this one!

I also had one white poppy bloom. I LOVE this poppy called 'Royal Wedding', BUT....

I am very disappointed as I expected many white poppy blooms as this is the third year for these Breck's poppies.  Most of you know I order from Breck's and I have not been happy the past few years.  You all know the saying..........the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they LEAP!  Hmmmmmmmmmm, one bloom is no leap in my book.  I planted six poppies  (2 of 3 varieties) and this year I  have a total of 4 buds..........4 buds total for six plants--not good!

I have long forgotten where I planted which color, so I am pretty excited to see what these two luscious buds will morph in to--I am hoping they will be the gorgeous salmon-colored 'Queen Alexander'.

Update 5:00 pm:  I got home from work and the two buds opened.  I was a little let down to see they were white.

I still have two buds to open on another plant. I think that one has to be either purple or salmon.

I also have two different colored spiderworts blooming--the typical blue and the less seen magenta:

I seem to have alot of magenta this year. I probably dug up a lot of blue and threw it out last year.  It tends to take over and sometimes my patience wears thin and I just toss it out in the wooded area where it usually continues to bloom even though there is very little sun back there.  You really can't kill this plant.

Right next to the magenta spiderwort, I have an allium 'Christopherii' blooming. 

This guy started out HUGE - like 12 inches across - now I can fit it in in my palm.  I really hate how my allium get smaller and smaller each year - that is those that return - most them just die out. I love allium, but I have to treat it like an annual to get the best blooms.  That can be pretty expensive, so I don't do it.  Do any of you have this problem with allium?

My MIL gave me this white-flowering plant. She called it Sweet Annie..........it has the most wonderful sweet smell..........do any of you grow this herb? 

I have a few clumps of Dutch Iris blooming. I like them next to these chives:

Last, but not least, I show you the promise of  flowers to come:

I think I enjoy the peony buds almost as much as the flowers.

Be sure to go and visit the other participants at Jean's Blooming Tuesday.

Blooming Tuesday

It has been raining quite a bit for the past two days, so I have not been able to show you my blue paint project.  We stained the deck flooring two days ago, but with all the rain, we have not been able to get my project back where it  belongs.  For those of you dying to know ( :) ) , at the end of my Blooming Tuesday post, you will get a clue as to what I painted.  I will show you more later.

I am having ambivalent feeling about these linky parties.  I really don't understand how they work. I have been to a lot of  blogs where the authors have a separate page for the dozens of linky parties they participate in.  There was no link to the current party as there should be; just a link to the main blog of the host.    Is this acceptable?  I can  sure see that it would be a lot of time to link to 12 different parties in one post -- so much easier if you just make one page  to list the linkies, but that is not the way I understood it should be. I thought each post had to link to the current week's party so if I wander on to the post three months from now I can just click and find the whole list of participants.  However, I have not seen any linky author delete anybody who uses a separate page.  With multiple parties, it would  be quite a pain to wait for all the hosts to post their linky so you can link up.   Jean, please let me know how this works! You are about the only linky party I do here right now. 
I have some creeping phlox that just began to bloom.  I removed most of it from the Arbor Gardens last year, but I did leave a couple of small areas, like this one:

I also bought a flat of orange impatiens and planted it along the walkway.  I wonder how it is going to look when the short pink lilies begin to bloom!  I was planning to buy white impatiens, but decided that was way too boring.

Back in the rockwall garden I have some tulips blooming. I have decided to use this area as a cutting garden for flower bouquets.  I have not even started to clean up this garden. It is full of fallen branches, etc.

I noticed a nice group of purple peony tulips and some very small Princess Irene orange tulips in bloom. I cut them all down and decided to make a centerpiece bouquet from them.

I added a few other bloomers, like this ajuga...

I ended up with this purple/orange bouquet:

I just love it!

You can see what I used that bouquet for if you click here.

Happy Blooming Tuesday! Click here to visit the other participants.

Mid May and STILL too early to plant

I had a few double early peony  Monsella tulips  (yellow with a red stripe) that bloomed yesterday. 

I cut them all and put them on my dining room table (with a few other tulips/daffodils) where I could enjoy them all this week.

They are much smaller than they were when I planted them about four years ago, but they still make a nice dining room table centerpiece.

DH had to go to ACE Hardware tonight to get some fertilizer.  While he went looking for that, I headed straight for the little flower section they have...the first time I have looked for annuals this year!  I found a few things I just had to buy:

Flowering Kale in purple and green/white.  I have only planted this once, but it is so wonderful in the fall (if you can get it through the worm eating stage).  I decided to give it a try in some of my containers this year.

 I also picked up four six-packs of Salvia Victoria Blue.  It will get a foot and a half with blue spikes that look good in so many container combinations.

I put the flat in the garage as it is still too cold to plant outside.  Today it is 52 degrees.  I have found that if I don't  buy them when I see them, I probably won't ever see them again this season.

I also picked up a cinnamon basil plant:

I have no idea what foods would be good with cinnamon basil? Suggestions are welcome!  Even if I never eat it, I will get $2.00 worth of pleasure just walking by it all summer and rubbing a leaf between my fingers, then smelling that wonderful aroma!  I will pinch off the flowers that are already on this plant.

We had to go to a builder's supply store to look at composite decking after work today.  We are having a small deck built this year on the front of our home to replace our crumbling concrete steps.  We hired the same contractor who did our living room last fall.  He won't be able to build it until early July, but we had to pick out the color so it could be ordered.  We decided on a TREX Transcend product. The color is called Spiced Rum. Here is the tiny little sample piece with my salvia tag on top:

The railings will be white.  We are both happy with our selection. It should be totally maintenance free...unlike our large back treated wood deck which we will be staining this week.  As we age, we are realizing that we cannot keep up with all the maintenance the stained wood/solid-stained white railings requires. TREX is a fake wood that never has to be stained.  It is at least three times as expensive as treated wood, but since the front steps deck will be pretty small (9ft. x 8ft), we decided to splurge to eliminate the maintenance.

I guess as you get older, you have to pay more to work less. 

It's a sad fact of life.

A Few Comment Answers

I hope you all know how much I appreciate when you take the time to leave a comment on my blog. There are millions of blogs out there and I never take it for granted if someone takes the effort to leave a comment on this blog. I don't respond to every single comment, but I try to resond if a question is asked or just to say thanks now and then.

Sometimes I post a reply in the blog itself. Today is that day.


My first comment is from Karen: Get this,I think I actually killed my obedient plant.....

Zoey: No! Please share your secret. How did you ever get rid of that thug? LOL.


From: ankhorite
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ankhorite has left a new comment on your post "Look at all the 'Broccoli Flowers'!":

...
Your 'Elijah Blue' grass should come back next spring. Named after Cher's son with Greg Allman, if I recall correctly.

Love the jagged-edged green plant above the echinacea in your final photo. Never seen anything like it. Under the begonias to the left, is that a fern drooping down, or something creeping out of the pot?

I'm leaving this comment going back to my own blog instead of my tumblr account in case you want to say hi. :)

Ankorite, I would love to say "Hi", but you posted as anonymous so I could not reply to you. That is why I decided to post the reply here. I hope you see it.

The jagged edged leaves are Ligularia. It gets a tall yellow spiky flower. This year it was the best it has ever been. You can see the bloom, if you look under "Ligularia" on my side bar.

Under the begonias I have creeping Jenny. If you mean the big blackish leaf, that is Elephant's Ear.

I had wondered if "Elijah Blue" was named after Cher's son. I am happy to hear that it should come back next year. Thanks for the info!



Mon, September 6, 2010 12:45:18 PM[Perennial Passion] New comment on A Few New Bloomers.
From: becomingkate
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I love how you include the background, so that I can see how you've grouped them, or added garden art. Beautiful!

Hi Kate,
Thanks so much for saying that.

I always like to show the actual garden, not just close-ups of flowers. That is a pet peeve of mine--I can see flower close ups in any catalog....what I enjoy seeing is the full landscape. Like you, I want to see what is planted beside what, the size of the border, the shape, etc.

So I am just tickled that there is someone else out there who appreciates that I attempt to do that!

and from Betty in Canada who has been a loyal reader for a long time (Thank you for that, Betty. I so appreciate all of my loyal readers!):

Thanks Zoey for the recipe, I am making that dressing very soon with the potatoes of course:) I need to look for wholegrain dijon mustard..don't know if our grocery store carries that....

Betty, I think any mustard will do. If you have only plain yellow mustard, just give it a good squirt. It will be fine.

Once again I want to thank all of you who take the time to leave a comment. If you want an answer, PLEASE make sure you don't post as anonymous because there is no way I can contact you.


For the past few days, I have been working on a Christmas tree skirt that I want to use this year. I posted about it on my sewing/quilting blog. Just click here if you want to see it.

Added More Tropicannas to this Garden

I think I am done moving things for at least a few weeks. On Sunday morning I moved some more cannas in containers to this area:

I really like the dark leaves with the red daylilies. All of these cannas should shoot up another 3 feet with big orange flowers. They usually bloom around mid August. By that time all the daylilies will be finished and, without the cannas, I would have nothing to look forward to since I removed all of the fall asters (did not like the ugly aster foliage) from this area.

I also cut down the spent lilies and much to my dismay, the ligularia, which left the area in front of the smaller arbor pretty blah. In this photo I have not yet cut down the ligularia. It's the tall thing with a teeny bit of yellow on the top--pretty well spent--so it was time to give it the big snip. I decided to move a big container of Elephant Ears and Cannas to the side of the arbor. There was a lot of daylily foliage in that area, which helped to hide the container.

The ligularia foliage is in the way from this angle. Here is another angle:


I am tempted to add more, but I also want some left for the deck. It does takes a lot more time to run around watering all of these containers since my water faucet is quite a distance away.

Update: Yesterday I bought a new Elephant Ears. I put it behind the pot I already had by the arbor. It looks like it's all one big arrangement.
This one has black stems.

Last Tango in Zoey's Garden

This one is called 'Kentucky'--a soft pumpkin color with cinnamon speckles.

I spent over 5 hours in the garden yesterday. I was out there shortly after 6:00 a.m. when I waved to my neighbor as she left for work. About noon she came back, stopped at the road, rolled down her window, and said, "Are you still at it?" I could not believe it was already noon.

I got involved in a lot of plant moving. Remember I wanted to move that big yellow daylily under the spikes of ligularia, the 'Rocket'? Here is where is was:
I moved it over a few feet and now it's right under the Ligularia.
I like it so much better in this spot. Of course it's never as simple as just moving one plant....no, no, no....I had to fill the hole from the daylily.......but with what? I decided that I needed another lavender plant. I have two in this area--one at the head of the garden and one on the side.
Can you see them? The hole is directly across from the side lavender plant.
Another lavender would form a perfect triangle. So I wandered around the Ponderosa until I found a lavender plant in one of the deck gardens. Within minutes it took a shovel ride to its new home on the opposite side of the yard.
It's pretty scrawny now. Hopefully it will survive and get big like it's new friends.

While glancing around I decided those Shasta daisies in the center had to go. I used to have a big patch of them, but removed it a couple of years ago. These are the ones that escaped.


Voila! Gone!

Now I had another big hole to fill. I decided to leave that area until I find some new plants to add to the garden. In the meantime, I brought a big container from the deck and tucked it in. I am loving that color combo of the canna 'Wyoming' leaves and the 'Capuchino' lily. There were a few other plants I moved--some iris and allium azure that were uprooted when I planted the big yellow lily and some other Shastas.

All in all I had a very exhausting, but wonderful day in my garden.

Ligularia -- The Rocket

Here is my one barely surviving Ligularia in June of 2006. It lived through that year, but never got very big.

It languished for a couple more years --until, I dug it up and put it in a plastic container so I could give it the attention it needed. It's a thirsty plant, requiring daily watering.

Each fall I buried the pot up against the house foundation
to protect it from Michigan's brutal winters.

It really took off this spring and I have been eagerly awaiting some of its tall yellow spiky flowers.

And here they are rising high above the 'Olina' lilies.

From another angle: I had forgotten that these flowers open from the bottom up. By the time the top is yellow, the bottom is dying. That's annoying, but I still love them.


Here is a healthy foliage shot:
Update: 7/11/10 4:00 P.M. - I just went out and took a picture. The one above is from two days ago.

You can see how the Ligularia has opened more in the past two days.

This last picture is a note to myself:


Self, I do not like the bold 'Charm Bracelet' daylily next to the more refined 'Capuchinos'. I think 'Charm Bracelet' would look more charming under the Ligularia. In fact, those two yellows together would make a mighty fine combination. I will probably be hauling out the shovel and wheelbarrow this weekend!