Crocosmia fall down period. No heavy rain needed. To keep them upright they need to be caged. I find the best siting for them in on the uphill side of a slope where they can be viewed from below and just let them fall down like they want to. I'm not into plant bondage. The bloom period might be three weeks at best.

My MIL had a lovely, large grouping of Crocosmia "Lucifer" and it did not fall down as described above. However, I wouldn't be surprised if it happened from time to time as my beloved peonies, which also have that "leaning, top-heavy" growth, have always collapsed with heavy rain. I finally grew tired of the blooms being abused every year (DESPITE the support caging) and pulled them out.

I actually have some Crocosmia I am planting this weekend, so your post is timely. I'm curious to see how they do for me.

Not all crocosmia fall down or splay/flop. There are dozens of cultivars on the market and many have a much reduced size or more compact growth habit that allows them to remain upright. But the tall growing selections like 'Lucifer' do benefit from caging or staking, as they easily exceed 3' here and become top heavy with flowers.

I also agree with floral that this is not a plant that takes well to center stage....as an accessory, yes but not as the 'star'! And with a late and all too brief bloom season as well.

btw, rain does not cause the flopping here - it is rare to have any rain here during crocosmia season. The tall varieties just do so naturally.

Thank you everyone for all your wonderful thoughts on this. So, there goes my brilliant idea 'out the window' lol.

Floral thank you for giving me your guidance. I thought about what you said, and now that I think about it, I agree that my plan isn't so good after all. It would be difficult to cut the lawn and I never thought about that. I'd like my flowers to last all summer. I love the bright red crocosmia so maybe I can find another spot somewhere for that another time. Right now, I just want the front of my house to look pretty.

I will have to come up with another plan. I'm just tired of looking at it the way it is. I will post a photo shortly. I would love to have new eyes on this, if you wouldn't mind? Thank to everyone for all your help. Diane

Diane, your picture hasn't worked. Can you try again? Wait till the greying has resolved before clicking submit.

Here's a couple of pics of the front of my lawn. Just to let you know, I have skimmia planted directly in the front of the house, they've been there for 10 years. I can move them if need be. I also have red rhododendrons along the one side. A yellow rose on the corner. I am so open to all your ideas. Would a small boxwood hedge work?

I have no idea what to plant in my cement urns. Or perhaps I should move them completely? The bowl part is about 16" x 16" - Skimmia in front.

Make an additional bed in what is the front left corner in the last picture, where the rose is. So that the left side of the involved space relates to the right - think of the lawn as a river that is flowing across the front of your lot, with the trees and shrubs etc. in the beds being the forest vegetation around it. And plant more shrubs in the new bed, to reinforce it and correspond to the existing shrubs to the right.

Can't see details of what is there now but where the lawn looks from here as though curving out to the right, before coming cross in front of the mobile and over to the drive would be the best spot to have a concentrated display of herbaceous plants. If you undertake my suggested alteration of the lawn shape.

I'd also put a small (15-35') flowering tree among the existing shrubs near the front end of the bed on the right. The end that is closest to the viewer in the last shot.

The urns should be over under the awning, where you presumably sit part of the time and the setting is more "built" than the informally landscaped front yard - which they don't have any thematic unity with. And maybe plant them up with assorted flowering annuals of small stature for summer long interest, including a percentage of kinds that will trail over the sides - trailing lobelia for instance.

Hi Embothrium,

Thank you so much for taking the time to think about my yard and provide me with your 'inspiring' suggestions. If I do the left side like you suggested, should I have the same rhododendrons that are on the right (and in the same color?) or could I just move some of the shrubs that are in front of the house in the new bed, thus replacing the front of the house with new herbaceous plants? I really love the idea of a flowering tree. I'll have to google small flowering trees. I'll had some flowers to the urns. I really am thankful for your awesome ideas.

Diane

Have you considered getting rid of the lawn entirely? Planting "treadwell" style plants and the rest with flowering perennials and shrubs? I try to avoid "one-hit wonders" if I can, and to me that's azalea and rhododendron.

If you like long-blooming reds, maybe try Gaillardia (common name Blanket Flower)? If you find out they do well in your area, Arizona Red with yellow tips is pretty, as is Mesa Red:

https://www.highcountrygardens.com/perennial-plants/gaillardia/gaillardia-grandiflora-arizona-red-shades

https://www.gardenia.net/plant/gaillardia-grandiflora-mesa-red

They flower continuously for us here in Maryland from late spring into the fall.

I wasn't thinking in terms of repeating the same specific varieties of shrubs on the left as on the right. But including one or two of them would provide some linking continuity. Otherwise the front garden would continue to be an informal layout, where involved elements are not routinely paired with one another or laid out in straight lines of the same few kinds.

The larger skimmia in particular is a bit far along in development to try and dig up, get to reestablish in a new position now. Also skimmia are shade plants, apt to have poor coloring in sunny positions.

I pictured the new flower area running from what appears to be the back end of the rhododendrons to somewhere before the corner of the house is encountered, and not coming across in front of the foundation like white skirting at the base. Which is probably best obscured additionally by more planting of evergreen shrubs.

However I can't really see this space between the shrubs and the corner of the mobile in your pictures, it may be that it is actually full of shrubs. Or on the other hand open to the neighbors, in which case there would be no backdrop for flowers there, unless you installed a fence or other dense, screening feature for these to be seen against. And make it so a body is not looking right past the flowers and into the neighboring lot.

Additionally your unit looks tall and boxy enough in your second picture that it might be more worthwhile to plant some adequately tall growing shrubs (2 different kinds) at the corners, to soften them. And maybe install a support of adequate size to frame the windows with flowering climbers like roses, clematis or both kinds together.

Really looking from the street in the second view I want to screen out that habitation to the right in particular with taller plants than you have now all the way along.

Hi Anna, I'm not sure what Treadwell Style means, so I will look it up. I like the grass in front of the house because I like to take my little dog outside with me when I'm out gardening. He loves to lay on the part of the lawn that gets shade. Oh my, what we do for our beloved pets. lol

Embothrum - Thanks again for your help. I thought it might help you if I showed a couple of more pics

This is the right corner. I have a yew tree there which is about 5' tall. 2 pieris shrubs, and the start of the rhododendrons (blooms on the rhodies are red.

This is looking across the street from the side corner of the house. There is the yew tree, rhodies are in front,

Looking down the side of my house, climbing roses, magnolia tree (10 years old have never seen a bloom on it. lol - I only keep it there for privacy out my kitchen window.. It would get very tall if I didn't cut it down a bit.

Embothrium - I hope this will give a better idea of what I'm trying to fix. I am not an avid gardener by any means. But I do know what I like and don't like. I know I don't like mine the way it is now. I really want my little home to look very pretty. I have a question? I love roses and clematis. I would love to have an arched arbor, and wonder if my lawn would lend itself to one? Thank you

The yew should be allowed to grow up taller and do more to screen the distracting elements next door. Instead of being squared off, something that also turns it into an incongruously formal element (topiary) not in keeping with the rest of the design. Which is entirely informal (except for the equally out of place paired urns).

And that sharp corner where the lawn meets the stepping stones should be replaced by a curve (one that probably would bring the bed out at that point at least as far as the shadow is in your picture). A curve that I was saying earlier looked like it might already be there, and the reason for putting a flower display in that particular part of the layout. Because where lawn curves into a bed is the most effective place to stage an arrangement of herbaceous flowering plants. However to do such a thing right in that spot you will have to make some definite changes, including taking out that grass path to the neighbors and augmenting the yew with additional background planting, moving several of the other shrubs out of the way and so on.

Put a bigger arbor or other support system around the picture window that looks out on the main lawn and street and you will do a lot to enhance that end of the mobile. Otherwise as far as arbors go you will probably find that these others - in this last shot - are too small to support the continued growth of the plants they are supposed to host. Also it would look at lot better if you had the same kind of arbors throughout - at any rate not two different ones immediately adjacent to one another, that are not even the same color.

And if you make that entire strip that the roses and magnolia are in into a bed, that parallels the house then you can add other plants there, make mowing and edging a lot easier. Again it might be desirable to mask the white skirting with low evergreen shrubs. If the Magnolia grandiflora is seed raised then that would explain why it hasn't flowered yet - it might be another 10 years before it starts to bloom. In the meantime it is not very big at all, if you already feel the need to cut it back now then it really isn't the best choice for that spot.

Embotrium, you've been a lot of help to me and I am so appreciative. I love your ideas! Going to see if my hubby will build a white trellis for in front of the window. Time to go shopping. I'll let you know what I do. Thanks so much.

Diane

Just wondering...what is considered a formal landscape design vs an informal design. Kinds of plants and how they are arranged. Is my house more informal or formal. What kind of design is best for my area?

The street end of the mobile does have a geometrically symmetric design, with the left half identical to the right half. So converting the front garden to a formal layout would cause it to relate better to that part of the mobile at least. With the garden being made formal by it becoming geometrically symmetric also, with straight lines, matching pairs and so on - this is the kind of setting where having a single round bed right in the center, like a bull's eye in a target could work. However to do a formal design there now you will pretty much have to completely reorganize everything you already have. And as far as specific plants are concerned any time you have only one of something - the yew for instance - that is not really going to lend itself to creating formality. Unless you can get more of the same kind that are as big as the one you have already, so that they match. Speaking of matching that is a recurring issue with formal designs using plants, in that any time development of plants used to make a pattern is uneven or one of them dies at some point along the way then the formal symmetry is lost. (Or not achieved in the first place). Same as if one of the brown panels flanking the windows on your mobile were to be removed.

From a landscape designer's viewpoint, trying to assign a formal garden design to the tiny garden space offered by most mobile home communities is just silly. One really needs some significant real estate for anything other than a very small parterre to read well. And a much more imposing residence (with no slight intended to your home, Diane :-))

There is also no landscape design principle that dictates a house with a formal or symmetrical facade requires a formally arranged or symmetrical garden. A looser or less formal design layout softens angular features and generally provides a more comfortable, casual 'atmosphere' that does not need to relate directly to any architectural style. So how one arranges the plantings and their specific placement is pretty much left up to the homeowner/gardener with guidance from actual defined landscape design principles (scale, repetition, balance, line, unity, etc.).

That's fine if you completely ignore having the tone set by the design of an existing building being matched by the landscaping that is added. That if a house and the garden immediately around it don't have the same "feeling" then a dichotomy is produced.

You opened by stating that a formal garden wouldn't "read" well with a mobile home and then closed with the assertion that there was no need for a house and its garden setting to have corresponding levels of formality.

" tone set by the design of an existing building being matched by the landscaping that is added "

Which has never been a major design concern or a defined principle!! And if carefully and well done, then no dichotomy exists at all.

And it is hard to imagine the feel of any mobile home being 'formal' enough to warrant this sort of treatment or produce any kind of dichotomy. I think you are just grasping at straws.

And it is hard to imagine the feel of any mobile home being 'formal' enough to warrant this sort of treatment

= the design style of a structure does affect what kind of a garden will look well in front of it.

In your mind perhaps. But I have never seen that expressed in any current landscape design text or class (we are not talking 18th century classical LD here!!) and I could show you dozens of examples where this plainly a non-issue.

Need a picture of my Disturbing Urns, where formal meets feral?

I was going to ask a question about this same bulb. I purchased a few bulbs of crocosima, Lucifer. I've never grown this bulb before. How deep should I plant them? I garden in Zone 5 and my soil is clay like. Also, we have lots of squirrels, rabbits and deer - will they eat the bulbs? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi Bella, I think if you start a new thread, you might get some replies. Happy Gardening.