you are too kind mxk! i know what you are saying and usually

i accept II am ”just” an avid gardener and never have been or will be a garden artist.

Maybe my feelings today reflect the phenomenon that we cant just have a ”hobby” we love but feel we must excel at it too. Getting older really crimps a perfectionist’s style.It just doesnt work anymore.

I love big plants too and complain regularly about the minaturization of nursery plants. Not a single nursery of 5 i visited had a tall agastache. Only ”Little Adder” where last several years there was plenty of Blue Adder and Blue Fortune available. was also loking at canna. i seem to have lost my big plants recently and be more intentional including them

i have 2 big pots I could raise to ” focal point ” status but must wait for my ” garden Helper ” to return next weekend. Thanks you got me thinking of solutions not just problems.

Yes, using pots can be a great solution to adding height or filling in visual holes. Re: tall plants: Do you have a native plant nursery near you? You can probably find tall versions of most natives that have been nativar-minaturized in one of these speciality places. That's where I found many of mine, though more and more "regular" nurseries are starting to carry the taller natives, which is a welcome development.

i have tunnel vision

or blinkers! Every day i look at

another bed where i have 6 ft Joe Pye Weed, and aster Jindai, and an a lavendar veronocastrum exiled to a fringe garden for disruptive behavior (promiscious flopping) i have polymorpha superbum that ive hesitated to put in a tame garden for fear it will get out of hand. Tall Boltonia will be ready for prime time next year. now it is just 4 skinny stalks.

New York aster iives in a wild space but perhaps i could get it to work thiugh it might just be too unwieldly.

of course clematis on a tower would work but i am not adept at growing them.

I'm with mxk3! I would love it if my gardens looked half as wonderful. If you feel you really need color now, maybe a few well-placed annuals? Seems that, other than my Joe Pye, all I have now is green, but I am pretty much okay with that. Too old and it is too hot now to do much other than water and clean and refill birdbaths. BTW, green is my favorite color after all. ;-)

Just thinking about the last picture with the green pulmonaria. What about filling the bare spots with either the silver Pulmonaria 'Diana Clare' or some of the silver leafed Brunnera?

Ah, Marie! I love your "disruptive behaviour and promiscuous flopping" -- a great phrase for a t-shirt, methinks!!! I need to steal that, if you won't mind. Of course, those descriptions could apply to ME in my present state as well, never mind my gardens. Oh dear...

It is so very frustrating nowadays, when I still see so much I wish/should do in the gardens, to realize that so little is actually possible any longer. I wish my gardens looked as kempt as yours -- unfortunately Mother Nature, the birds who so generously plant seeds of who-know-where-they-got them, and my growing lack of general care has led to quite a mess. And some days I just don't care about it -- I blame this continuing dreadful heat and humidity for much of my attitude.

Marie, don't you think sometimes we are our worst enemy? [g] I manage to keep up with my front garden for a number of reasons. The neighbors are looking at it. [g] It's a manageable size. It's in the sunniest part of the garden, things grow easier in the sun, my favorite plants grow in sun. And I pack the plants in so there isn't a lot of weeding to do. Just laying down mulch, digging and moving plants when I change my mind again....lol.. pruning the shrubs and watering and fertilizing. Well, I guess that is a lot, but believe me I'm not always getting it all done.

In the back which is the larger amount of my property, it's become a big mess. Your garden looks 100% better than my back yard!

But I do understand that you go out and you're not satisfied with it. I do that too. I do have little vignette's that I'm happy with and I love to see anything growing well, but a good part of what I've "designed" if you want to call it that, I'm not impressed with. [g] I realized a long time ago, that I just don't have the talent that some people have to design and yet, I so appreciate good design too, so it does leave me dissatisfied when I can't accomplish what would please me. And what would please me? I don't know but I would know it if I saw it!! lol

So, instead of beating myself up about what might seem like 'mistakes', I think I do a pretty good job considering. And I still love my garden. I love the whole process and when I go out and look at the mess, the thing I am thinking about, is what I would really love to do next. What plants are doing well that I need more of, which new plants could I add to that area, why didn't I put enough mulch down this year, next year I am going to put down all the mulch I need. Oh, I love that Lily, I forgot I had it....and on and on it goes.

It sounds like your frustration is more about what you feel powerless to do. You don't think you can fix the areas you're still not happy with. I say you can attempt it. Maybe in smaller ways and slower and in different ways than you usually do. It's a relief to decide you can do something about it. Just have small goals and get started on something small you can change.

And laceyvail's suggestion to add something between the Pulmonaria is easier than moving them around. I agree with everything Mxk3 said. The garden is never finished and it's just evolving all the time. It's just....what's next?

And btw, I LOVE your Arborvitae! It looks very happy there! Nice and full and not a stark line of them that you sometimes see. A great accent! Looks better than mine...lol.

You guys are just what a sore gardener’s heart needs! Who said ”overwhelmed?” Today i will set aside thoughts of aging,arthritis everywhere, limited imagination, doctors appointments and funerals. i will repot 3 plants before they die because it is too hot to plant them. i will work in the shade. and I will call my best friend who, incidentally , has never wielded a spade in her life. The word pulmonaria has never crossed her lips.

I dont have Diane Claire but i do have stalwart Mrs Moon. whom some garden writer recently dissed. Shes been in my garden for 20 years and never failed to deliver and now she can renew her contract.

Marie, that's just what I did the other morning, early before it got hot. I had plants stiill in pots from the 3 Sisters Sale in May and I decided I didn't know when I was going to get around to planting them, so I repotted them into large pots and watered them in. I felt very good about that decision and wished I had done it sooner. Next time I go to a sale, and I don't already have a spot for them, I'm going to repot them right away.

And another thing I do in the garden, is do everything I can to turn gardening into my personal 'gym'. I fill up a 1.5 gallon watering can and lug that around watering plants, and I bend and squat and kneel and get up and down and make sure I sweat, just a little before I go in the house again. In small time packets. No 3 hr gardening sessions and in this heat, I'm out @ 6:30a and in by 8:30a. You can do a lot in 2 hours. I don't mean to say I stay out there working for 2 hours...but I will do a small job and go in and come back out again and do another, et. And after dinner if the garden is burning up, I sit in a lawn chair and hand water the whole front bed that is in full sun. I wouldn't have to do that as often, if I had put down enough mulch!

The watering cans seem to make the most difference. I can feel the muscles in my shoulders growing. I switch sides and I lift it carefully, bending my knees and then stand up straight and balance the weight and suck in the abdomen. Of course, early in spring, I start out without a full watering can. I fill it up half way and increase it as it gets easier.

I'm with mxk3! I would love it if my gardens looked half as wonderful. If you feel you really need color now, maybe a few well-placed annuals?

I double ditto both sentences!

I am a big proponent of using largish pots containing annuals throughout our perennials beds. (Almost) instant all season colour and the pots themselves having varying heights and colours and textures, always seem to enhance any perennial garden.

Marie, I was thinking of this thread this evening as I struggled with the placement of plants, my biggest problem is I'm not much of a drift planter, more of a plunker of single specimens, and attempting to have all nicely coexist with other singles doesn't always work out, there's just not a lot of continuity! Okay, am reworking a large area and "think" am finally getting the feel for the placement of a few swaths of catmint, grasses and the classy narrow growing veronicastrum 'Erica' ... probably though, won't be happy with it all next year, lol. I need to get GardenHo to do the designing!! :)