I very much like tiarella but I gave up on growing them -- looked good for a couple seasons then petered out. I don't think this is unique to you or me, I've other numerous other reports of them being short-lived. Maybe it depends on climate IDK.

My Sugar & Spice came back smaller and smaller with each consecutive year until I moved them to more sun. Since then they’ve been thriving in about five hours of late afternoon sun per day.

Some years the bloom performance is definitley better than others, though, but at least the foliage is still pretty.

Doesn't die. Doesn't thrive. Occupies an easily ignorable pot...so I do (ignore it). The very definition of 'meh'.

Tiarella Sugar and Spice is a hybrid of unknown parents that the breeder believes were Tiarella trifoliata var.laciniata from the PNW and Tiarella wheryii from the deep southeastern US. The species native to the eastern US and the Carolinas is Tiarella cordifolia. I alao tried growing Tiarella decades ago and I'd like to try growing ir again. These Saxiphrage family species are fussy about soil. They require aa soil with lots of organic matter, with excellent drainage These plants like growing in the thin organic soils of cliffsides. Mitella and Heuchera like the same conditions. I currently am growing Mitella and a native Heuchera. If I do geow Tiarella again it will be cordifolia. It is probably bettter suited for the hot, humid summers in the midwest compared to a Tiarella hybrid with trifoliata genes.

Saxifrages were such an integral part of growing up around the damp and verdant NW that I have spent much £££ and vast amounts of effort attempting to reproduce the conditions they really like...but have generally failed miserably. Supreme alpinists, like their name, rock-breaker, I have come to conclude that they are simply unable to grow without the close companionship of stone...a mineral bedrock for their questing roots to curl against...while even with my most careful attempts at crevice gardening and rockeries, even the tough asiatic fortunei and what I always thought was immortal and everywhere, saxifrage urbium, are barely hanging on..

I have not come across Sugar and Spice but have grown several varieties of cordifolia (which survives a little longer than wherryi). Confusingly (for me) the longest surviving member of this family in my dry gardens is a somewhat weedy tellima. Seems like my small clump of tellima possesses considerable staying power - enough to stretch 3-4 feet in an even slightly damp spring.

I just don't have woodsy, moist, rich soil anywhere. This winter is becoming the season of chopping down, as, far from creating shady nooks underneath the mature ramblers and many fruit trees, I just end up with patches of dry, weed-infested soil with limited utility. It really isn't an easy fix, creating micro-climates or changing the geographical and climate conditions of even a small plot. Better to accept the lush greeneries I often see on east coast Z5/6/7 gardens on here are not, and never will be in my gardening future.

Some of you are such great enablers though! I have to steel myself and still fail. I absolutely do not expect the unwise order of another hydrangea to survive more than a season...and yet, sense flies out of my head with such ridiculous speed when confronted with another tender green vision of fulsome bloom.

Suzie Bellflower yes I believe underlying rock is what these fussy Saxaphrages need. Same thing with Parnassia. I need to find some limestone slabs. Unfortunately I don't have enough land to create a cliff. I'm not at all familiar with Tellima.

Mitella nuda

1. There was Mitella diffyla? growing here. I think the Northern Maidenhair Fern, Adiantum pedatum appreciates similar conditions. I have failed miserably with those ferns and they're so beautiful.🥺

These cliffs were created when an ancient lake's glacier dam broke releasing a torrent of water that carved out these cliffs. It also deposited sand in huge quantities.

Micranthes species

Natural cliff bog garden featuring Micranthes and Rhododendron.

Parnassia. I hsve tried growing Parnassia palustris from seed with no luck. They like growing in organic matter on stone, with water constantly seeping on them. I have never known anyone who actually grew Parnassia in a garden?

More Parnassia with something in Dipsacaceae? I think you have a similar herbaceous Dipsac in the UK? We have no herbaceous species here afaik.

Parnassia seedpod. It was surprising to discover Parnassia is in the Burning Bush family, but I do now see the resemblance. It would make a festive hat dont you think?🤠

Dipsacacaea (sp?) means teasels to me.

Parnassia sp. are, I think, regarded as one of the indicator species for fenland (although wetland definitions can be a bit shifting (marsh, bog, swamp, fen). Groundwater...and plenty of it, is an absolute requirement for parnassia. While East Anglia is climatically the most arid part of the UK, a huge part of it is sealevel wetland...depending on a complex series of drains, pumps, levels and embankments to keep us from vanishing underwater. Once drained though, the land has the highest proportion of top-grade agricultural land...leading to agri-crimes not dissimilar to the environmental catastrophes of dustbowl USA. We can literally see our topsoil washing down the roads as fields have become over-machined, exposed monocultures. That cat is never going back in the bag Far from deploying any sort of green agenda, all political will is bent to the service of corporate profit. A small, but telling example...our allegedly left govt. has increased bus fares by 50% ( a lifeline for the poorest workers in the country). while failing to raise a single penny on (fossil)fuel duty. We see the direction of travel and it is depressingly more of the same snouts in the trough, greed and corruption. As for what the next week brings (shudder).

It has taken me an embarrassingly long length of time to accept that there is a big difference between surviving and thriving...and merely attempting tiny ecosystems in a pot or a garden bed to grow some beloved species or another is just not ever going to work.

It's the same story here, corporatism with an annual $ trillion dollar defense budget. No money for land restoration or helping people in need, but hundreds of billions for overseas wars that we have no business meddling in. If we don't cut back on co2, climate change will make everyone homeless. Homelessness is now illegal, yet millions of empty buildings are everywhere. Environmentalists and genocide sympathizers are branded terrorists. My town of 200.000 had one community garden, but the city bulldozed it and built a drug rehabiltation center on the spot. I didn't have a plot there.

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/3938280/my-tiarellas-have-been-declining#n=17