These look like excellent choices! How exciting is it?? :)

I’ve also placed a few orders: echinacea Supreme Cantaloupe, nepeta Purrsian Blue, various iris ensatas, gladiolus.

Now come on, Spring! :)

SB, I hope you enjoy the lonicera as much as I do mine!! Not only is it a great evergreen groundcover, it is a wonderful cascading, draping addition to a planted container.

It's like a miniaturized honeysuckle so best admired from close up. 😉

It's planned to go in the raised bed in the field that has lots of open soil. Good to know about it's trailing habit. My wife enjoys container gardening. Once this has spread a bit I'll loan her some.

Disclaimer: There is no actual loaning, she owns half of all of these. :o)

@mazerolm_3a I have tried to grow some of the unusually colored echinacea's, but they don't last for me. I see you are much colder, so it doesn't appear to be a hardiness issue. That Nepata looks stunning. Might have to look for one of those.

Ah, nepeta. I have also just ordered a new nepeta (to cheer myself up after the truck failed it's MOT (thankfully, youngest is a welder). I am planting the bones of the gravel garden, using silvery shrubs so the tall nepeta nuda 'Romany Dusk' will anchor the deep pink/reds of dieramas, rose campion and gladioli papillio 'Ruby'...I hope. It is a big one, growing over 4ft tall. I dithered over whether to buy a phlomis tuberosa or the nepeta but the dark stems of the nepeta decide it for me.

I have a couple of alstoes which have anextraordinary bloom cycle - they are shooting now and will be in flower from May through to Xmas. Hope you get as much joy as I do, SB.

I stick to tried and tested e.purpurea. Fancy-pants hybrids always fizzle out after a couple of seasons at best.

We have an undiminished appetite for any number of 'new to me' threads.

L crassifolia is a new one to me. Can you comment on the scent and spread GG? If it’s happy with you I imagine it would work for me.

Yep, looks interesting. Always looking for ground cover under the roses.

it is a wonderful cascading, draping addition to a planted container.

Thanks for this idea@gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9) as too often I get in a rut re trailers for our planters.

As can often be the issue, it might be problematic sourcing it near me as given its zone hardiness it would only be part of the annuals section in a nursery. I dont ever recall seeing it in the past.

Sadly, it has no scent. But if happy, it will produce a plethora of tiny but distinctly honeysuckle-esque flowers that start out with pink and cream buds that develop into buttery yellow flowers. Pollinators love them and I have even seen low flying hummingbirds visit. An individual plant can spread 3-4 feet or more but does so rather slowly so not an aggressive spreader.

There is a large planting of it at the nearby Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden that covers several hundred square feet but I suspect that started as more than a single plant.

It is quite a tough little plant, rated winter hardy to zone 5. Foliage can develop purplish/bronze tones in cold winters.

RP, this is not a particularly drought tolerant plant. I lost one in a previous garden by ignoring it during our usual dry summers. Does best in evenly moist soil or with periodic watering as required.

@SeniorBalloon: re-echinaceas: I don’t think I’ve ever lost one plant, and I’ve tried lots of new varieties. But the plants are completely covered with a lot of snow during winter.

@rosaprimula UK (Cambridge) Z8/9: I looked up nepeta Romany Dusk: what a beautiful and unique-looking variety! I do love nepetas! :)

The only things I've ordered are a mulberry tree (for the fruit) and a DA Desdemona rose. Besides seed.

@rosaprimula: I hope you post pics of the "gravel garden" when it's complete. I am impressed by people that can visualize plant combinations ahead of time. it speaks to the experience you have with a wide variety of plants. I tend to buy things willy nilly and then try to figure out where they'll go.

What does "MOT" stand for"? "Mother Of Trucks"?

@gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9) After 3 or 4 years does L. crassifolia stop spreading? Or it just takes that long to get a 3 to 4 foot clump?

@mazerolm_3a We get pretty cold, down to 5 degrees occasionally , but often don't have the snow cover. I wonder if that's what does them in? The only one that does well is the old standby rudbeckia.

O Senior Balloon, in my entire gardening life, this will be the first time ever, of attempting some actual planning and forethought. I have put borders and beds together for customers but this is not remotely how I garden for myself. For a start, I have never had enough money to even fill a modest bed so all of my gardens are a total mish-mash of single plants bought on a whim and anything I have managed to scavenge or grow from slips or seeds. Then elbowed into any available space. Once released into the wild, I have a tendency to forget about them. My old gravel garden was planted up over a decade...and honestly evolved into an overstuffed hot mess (but years 4-8 were pretty good).

It isn't hard to rock up to any decent garden centre with a customer's budget (£££) and make something look good even allowing for growth to maturity. I don't get stupidly experimental in customer's gardens, either. but I do use my gardens to test an awful lot of random plants - another reason why they are a bit of a mess. Now I am not working much, I had hoped to have at least one area of the allotment which looked...put together. The state of the old gravel garden and last summer's drought pointed the way.

. I do,however, really like to be surprised by plants and also encourage a fair bit of self seeding and territorial battles so I am expecting much the same story with the new gravel garden.: 3

years of sleeping, creeping and leaping, 3 years of looking OK, then a 3 year slide into chaos

MOT - Ministry of Transport - an annual certificate to test for road worthiness.

Thanks for the reminder, GG. PNW is not like East Anglia...and I suspect my soil is pretty unwelcoming to loniceras of any variety (recalls woeful state of .common l.periclymenum on the shed).

Lonicera crassifolia is present in the UK.

Lonicera crassifolia 'Little Honey' / creeping honeysuckle 'Little Honey'/RHS Gardening

The Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden has a planting of the species because the SEH designation attached to the Far Reaches offering is the initials of the Garden director. Indicating he collected and introduced it from the wild.

Gallery: Companion Plants – Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden (rhodygarden.org)

Wish ya'll could see the Lonicera crassifolia growing at Dancing Oaks Nursery here in Oregon. It has grown up the door frame on their pole barn --of its own accord-- no help needed from the human gardeners, and proceeded to grow along the top of the door, a very lovely frame of foliage.

Wish y'all could see ...

Seems likely this (5th picture in the sequence on the left, probably one or two others as well) is a section of the same specimen.

Lonicera crassifolia, Evergreen Honeysuckle – Dancing Oaks Nursery and Gardens

@Embothrium that site says it prefers part shade to shade, where as the Far Reaches site says " Exposure: Sun to Part Sun "

https://www.farreachesfarm.com/Lonicera-crassifolia-SEH-085-p/p1552.htm

I'm certainly planning on putting it in a fairly sunny spot.

Just ordered from Digging Dog for the first time. I saw this flower, Hooker's Inula, at the botanical garden in Edinburgh and Digging Dog was the only place I could find it. I also ordered some rusty foxglove and three different persicarias--all new plants to me!

I don't know if Hooker's Inula will be as rampant as Inula helenium -- but if it is, the birds spread the seeds quickly, and the roots are hard to kill. One plant became hundreds within five years or so...I don't let Inula helenium set seed anymore while I chop away at the unwanted seedlings/plants.