Wow! Chest-high spiderwort? No wonder it needs staking. Mine has never gotten more than a 18" tall and I hope it never does. After a heavy rain even 18" spiderwort flops over, but it usually rights itself after a couple of days. Stalks sprawl badly when they have finished most of their blooms. Mine start turning black at the same time, so I whack the stalks way back. Most years I get a second bloom when the weather cools down again. They are definitely winter hardy here and some of them start sprouting up in new locations after a couple of years. They are hard to dig up completely if you want to get rid of them - nothing like lysimachia or bishop's weed - but you probably won't get all the root and will have to take out small sprouts the following years to be rid of it completely.
I would ask the customer who gave it to you what he or she did about staking. I have no experience with spiderwort that tall. If I hadn't seen the article on the web that you were talking about, I would have thought we were calling two entirely different things spiderwort. All I can think of is that there's a big difference between the size of the species and the size of cultivars. That's just a guess though. Wow!

A neighbor gave me a couple of plants 3 years ago.
The first year they didn't do so great, but since then they have invated my azelas. I'm going to have to relocate them. Some end up toppling over, but I think it's they're too crowded.

thanks for your advice.
the woman who gave it to me had no idea what it was. she dug some up from her daughters yard because she liked it but when it grew so tall she decided she didn't care for where she planted it.
so the unknown plant became a day long discussion at the diner i work at and a customer finally recognized it and i researched it on the net when i came home. sure looks identical to spiderwort but it's chest high to me and i'm 5 ft 4!
are yours in full sun? where i put mine is more high filtered light with a little direct sun in the morning. that sound okay?

They grow fine in sun or shade.

I have never heard of spiderwort getting so tall, You may want to post a photo if you have one. It may be something else.

There are native species of Spiderwort that attain a height of more than 3 feet. One is Tradescantia gigantea that is found in TX & LA. Most of the those native in GA & the southeast are only 12-18 inches in height, some less.

Yeah, the wild Spiderwort in my neck of the woods is about 18 inches high. Lots of it along the roadsides on the ridge where I live. Last year, I bought several selected forms for some reason -- I guess it was my Spiderwort Phase. 'Blue and Gold' is pretty cool with the very bright gold foliage, but the others are not overly impressive. They look really ratty by mid-Summer. I think these need plenty of water.

i took some pictures...just not sure about how to go about posting them here...do i have to host it on another site?

Spiderworts are very drought tolerant and they also do well in damp locations. However, I have noticed that mine look rattier in wet summers than in dry ones. In either kind of summer, they eventually need to be cut back sometime in July because they look just awful.

I have several types of Spiderwort and one of them (name unknown) is up to my waist. I am 5'3". It has a silver/green leaf rather than the usual green. Here's a pic that I took today.
{{gwi:819880}}

what a lovely shade of purple! mine is blue.

Tonks, post it to another site such as Photobuckets.com It is free to sign up. Once you download your pic to PB then you can copy and paste either a pic or a link to to it here.

let's see...
[img]http://www.otcentral.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4415[/img]
that should be of the height...they weren't blloming that day so i'll post this one where they were blooming....
[img]http://www.otcentral.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4416[/img]

A couple of years back I ordered some White spiderworts from Bloomingbulb. They usually get about 18" tall. The second year after planting them I had some purples come up in the midst of them and they do get a bit taller, say 36". Throughout the yard I have the occasional volunteer purple cropping up.

They seem to do well in sun or part shade. I don't do a whole lot to them as they are pretty low maintenance. Note that they'll fade by summer and you'll need to cut them back to the ground (hit them with the weed wacker.) They'll come back in the fall for another glorious round of blooms.

Here's an picture of mine I took a month ago(lower left corner):

I love spiderwort...in our driveway, alongside the house, in full afternoon sun, we've a beautiful gift of a clump of them growing merrily. (They came "with the house") they're a BEAUTIFUL deep purple/blue.

I'd like to thin the clump a bit, and fill in the other side of the house with some color. Generally, that's in fairly deep shade, but just now my neighbors' privet hedge is so severely cut back that it's getting lots of sun.

Will transplanted spiderwort do ok there now, and later, when it's shady there again, will it come back (aka, next year)

Oh yeah, note please that I live in Massachusetts!