Gaillardia Goblin and Arizona Sun are both blooming machines and stay well under two feet. I have a dwarf balloonflower called Fairy Snow that blooms in July and August with a white flower touched here and there in purple and it meets your height criteria. Just purchased a dwarf lavender called Dwarf Blue that is supposed to stay 12 inches. Lots of Dianthus stay in the range you are looking for. Petite Delight Monarda makes a nice short clump and mine is sending up new growth to bloom again. Any of the Standard Dwarf Bearded Irises would work too and many are rebloomers, to bloom again in the fall. Ceratostigma plumbaginoides also makes a nice front of the border plant and I love the blue flowers. These are all plants that I have in the front of my perennial borders.

Linda

I will vouch for the Monarda "petite delight". It has just been so impressive in my garden the last couple of years. Absolutely love it...neat, compact and it is just fading now after blooming for the last several weeks (I really don't remember when it started, but it was a good long bloom) The leaves are very dark green and fresh looking after the seed heads are cut off.

Thanks, this is just the input I'm looking for, you know what it's like when your brain hits intermission LOL.
I have lots of different dwarf Iris a very generous GW member gave me so I can use a few of those along the edges. Some well behaved low growing Michaelmas Daisies, a couple of perennial Geraniums and the Balloon Flower mentioned above. I do lean toward the cool colors rather then the hotties with punches of white, I'm trying to break this trend tho.
I thought I hated yellow but if you could see all the yellow in my garden you wouldn't know it, but in my defence they are mostly a lemon rather than a bright yellow. Monarda 'Pink Delight' sound nice, I'll have to look for that one. Keep the suggestions coming.

Annette

I think I might like a bed of nothing but lavender and purple plants, but it might be really boring. Purple/lavender is my favorite color, but I find that a punch of yellow here and there, even a really bright yellow, along with some white, really makes things pop. Still would like that purple bed sometime, though....

LInda

Linda, when I first planted my big perennial bed in the back yard I unconsciously made it just about entirely purple because so many of my favorite plants at that time were purple. Whoops! It actually did not look all that great to me.

Anyway, for lemon yellow I just love Coreopsis Moonbeam. Another lemon yellow fav is 'Happy Returns' daylily which is right around 2 feet and pumps out flowers for a solid month.

Other possibilities:

- groundcover sedums
- 'Drift' roses and the like.
- The tidy geraniums 'Ballerina' and 'Purple Pillow' are super sweet.
- Smaller campanula, like 'Waterfall' or 'Samantha'

I could go on, but that's a good start!

forgot to include the hosta "gold drop". It grows beside the monarda "petite delight" and gets the same amount of sun....nice and compact, good growth rate and looks good beside the dark green leaves and purple flowers of the monarda. I have never had any slug damage at all and it has been there a few years. I thought that I had taken a pic a couple of weeks ago when the monarda flowers were at their peak, but apparently I didn't.

Oh...ETA...veronica "royal candles" for a beautiful shot of blue! :)

This post was edited by greylady-gardener on Fri, Aug 8, 14 at 15:32

Just remembered another small hosta for the front of the border with lots of color - Blonde Elf. Mine doesn't mind getting some sun during the day.

karin, thanks for warning me about the all purple bed, and also for suggesting G. Ballerina. I just purchased it this past year and it is just so dog gone cute. It replaced my "late", dead, Orkney Cherry", another cutie for the front that had gorgeous foliage all summer along with long bloom time.

Linda

I always have far too many tall plants myself...but a few of the tinies I grow :- pinks - many of the dianthus are appropriate as neat edgers and this year, I am especially enjoying the intensely vivid jewels of the cheddar pink - d.gratianopolis and the deep colour of d.cruentus - both of which look wonderful in gravel. Most of my low-growers tend to be spring flowers since I aim for my plants to attain height as the year progresses in order to outrun the grass and weeds......so at this time of the year, there are even fewer plants under 2feet. I love the umbellifer family but mostly, they are all tall...apart from a really fresh and dainty white - athamanta turbith. Was uncertain whether this was even a perennial but it returned in its green and frothy finery, fresh as a daisy and blooming this week at about 16inches. A dainty agapanthus, 'Peter Pan' is blooming, along with callirhoe involucrata and an unidentified sphaeralcea with prostrate shell pink flowers. New to me, with foliage similar to californian poppies is the golden hunnemannia fumarifolia and also blooming - limnanthes perezii in clouds of violet.These are all blooming in the sun with afternoon shade.
Goes without say - you can always count on the hardy geraniums.

Geraniums I can do, I have a few of the shorter ones. 'Cambridge Pink', 'Biokovo', 'Midnight Reiter' 'Rozanne' and 'Jolley Bee' these last two are said to be the same plant but they're not. I growing them side by side and the differences are very noticeable.

Annette

I agree Annette. I grow both and I see differences. I happen to like Jolly Bee a bit better, but that may be because I have it in a place where it is better suited. Rozanne is not able to ramble as easily and gets bunched up. I need to shear her and let her grow out again.

Linda

I picked up Stachys byzantina/lamb's ear 'Helen Von Stein' a few years ago and am loving it--zero care, tolerates full or part sun, drought tolerant but doesn't show signs of stress during wet seasons & looks good 11 months out of 12.

No one has so far mentioned Alchemilla mollis/lady's mantle and I have many in both sun, shade and part sun/shade. The seem to be happy wherever I plant them. Same with Heuchera/coral bells.

Hellebore/Lenten rose would give you blooms early in the growing season. I now have six varieties; all are as tough as nails and require zero help from me to thrive. They also aren't bothered by critters or bugs.

Definitely dianthus, especially for the great fragrance and pop of color when it blooms.

veronica "royal candles" for a beautiful shot of blue!

I was just going to recommend this when I spied your post! A great suggestion.

Here is a link that might be useful: VRC

Rouge, I love 'Royal Candles' have several plants of this little beauty. Yesterday I bit the bullet and mowed everything down except the bush clover and a tree wisteria planted against an old iron plant pole. The wisteria looks stupid there I bought it as a vine 2 years ago, it turned out to be a tree (mislabled). I'lll move it in the fall.
Not a big bed but it's going to be a job digging out all the roots, along with the lily of the valley and columbine, plus some ajuga, euphorbia, that d... buttercup and other assorted weeds. I'll probably end up sifting the soil and amending it before I replant, so it looks like it will be spring before I can replant. In the meantime I can get together the plants I want for this bed and store them in the pot ghetto over winter.

Here's a picture of the weed patch I'm working with, taken earlier this year so the bush clover isn't showing, I use to grow fuchsia baskets on the pole before we cut down the cherry tree that shaded this bed, now it has full afternoon sun.
Last year was a bust for me due to illness so from April on nothing was done in the garden and it shows, but last winter before I got sick I cut a step into the rock wall and added a little flagstone path for easier access to the rest of the bed for this old gal, it doesn't show up in the picture.
This picture, weeds and all, will give you an idea of what I'm working on.
Annette

One shorty I could never be without is Geranium renardii. Even considering my disenchantment with perennial Geraniums it remains one of my top 5 perennials!
{{gwi:260948}}

Geums are a favorite of mine, as I am sure everyone here knows by now, lol. ;-)

A Gentian? 'True Blue' is a nice, although I doubt there is a Gentian that is not cool!

Deschampsia 'Northern Lights' is a great little grass. I'm thinking I may need more in fact...

I still like Prunella, even though mine have started to seed about a bit with age.

Right now I am lovin' my dwarf balloon flowers.

If you are looking for something with a structural "woody" presence, how about Teucrium chamaedrys 'Nanum'?
CMK

christinmk--I was looking for a really short white geranium and so I will keep an eye out for 'renardii'.

Annette, I want to add astilbe 'chinensis' to the list. forgot about it until sitting out this afternoon and thinking about how nice it is looking! :)

***ETA--sorry Annette, the astilbe in the garden that gets a fair bit of sun is doing well but the blooms are fading quite quickly in the heat/sun, so maybe they wouldn't be a good choice for your sunny area. I do have some in a garden that gets only about an hour and a half to two hours of sun and the blooms are very nice and fresh and seem to be lasting much better than the others.

This post was edited by greylady-gardener on Sat, Aug 9, 14 at 20:10