Lower hudson valley ny zone 6

5 years ago

I have a narrow garden strip along my driveway up against the neighbors white picket fence. i’ve tried coneflowers, phlox, cardinal flowers and colombine.but they are all too tall and floppy they wind up flopping onto the driveway - just not right. i do have 3 astilbes which are better size. would it look better with fewer types of plant, more of one plant ?

suggestions for more tidy and colorful perennials that will cheer up my little strip of land? guessing it’s about 2 feet wide and maybe 12-15 feet long. thank you. the soil is good😂

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Circus Peanut

5 years ago

@sandy (z5b nys) ha! I first planted nepeta for my own housecats (with some nagging guilt about being a parent encouraging drug use, lol). My cats have passed on but the catmint stays and has done better than possibly anything else in my garden (with the exception of madonna canadian anemones, which are crazy invasive, and the native columbines and lupins that volunteer up here in ME like weeds).

The white version of nepeta is hard to find in my area but I snagged some a few years back and it’s just wonderful, smaller, more compact and tidy — actually, possibly a perfect plant for anita the OP? blooms a bit later than the blue and lasts a long time, looks a bit like baby’s breath.

@anita55 – in terms of old-fashioned flowering perennials, some other straight ones that do well for me without floppage are maltese cross (3-4 ft when established — they take a few years — red-orange, about four weeks from june into early july and sporadic thereafter). Also giant hyssop is very tall and straight, to 5-6 feet, with lovely purple wands from july-august, and it always brings the monarchs.

Have you tried bee balm?

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Comments (7)

ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
5 years ago
any chance at a pic???

is snow removal an issue ... as in.. piling snow there ... is road salt an issue???

how tall is the fence .... plastic or wood fence.. as in.. wiol it need to be painted some day ???

does it impact half day of sun???

how tall are you thinking.. is that possible with only a 2 foot ... foot print ...

at a min ... i would probably go with some type of ground cover sedum to cover the whole space ... and then work in some taller plants for visual interest ...

any interest in vines on the fence.. like clematis.. or annual versions ...

ken
kitasei2
5 years ago
Im in your area and honestly there are no perennials that will bloom here for more than a few weeks so I’d move to annuals.
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sandy (z5b nys)
5 years ago
What about Pow Wow echinacea? They aren’t as tall as other varieties of coneflower and in my zone 5 garden they (I’ve had Wild Berry for a couple years and added a white one last year) bloom through the summer into fall. Another possibility is Goldsturm rudbeckia which blooms midsummer through fall. I love Goldsturm, but some years the leaves have been affected by something that causes them to shrivel up. This year I’m trying the ”Little Goldstar” variety which is supposed to be less susceptible than Goldsturm to problems and has a more compact habit. They’re supposed to bloom mid summer to fall. I bought the plants a few days ago already in bloom which may be from whatever the nursery pumped into them. My guess is that they’ll start blooming a bit later next year.
anita55 thanked sandy (z5b nys)
Circus Peanut
5 years ago
Could you do something like nepeta (catmint)? Massed in a row, it looks very lush and full against a white fence all summer long, pick a variety that’s more upright ( cat’s meow, blue wonder, souvenir) and/or mix white and blue catmints together. If you shear them after the first long bloom they’ll bloom again in late summer/fall. Mine go for many many weeks up here in zone 5a.
kitasei2
5 years ago
Yes, nepeta is the one perennial that occurred to me that holds its own here for that long.
sandy (z5b nys)
5 years ago
I had to remove my nepeta once the neighbors’ semi-feral cats discovered them. They’d visit on a daily basis to roll around among them in an ecstatic frenzy. Totally ruined the plants. I don’t think everyone has this experience, but if you decide to use catmint, you might consider setting out a test plant or two before fully committing. BTW, the plants were fine for the first three years.