help with spacing on three flowering perennials

last year

Hello perennial experts,
I recently bought 3 perennials with the intent of planting them one in front of another in front of another- by height- but I wanted to come here before deciding on my spacing since it seems like in my experience, plants often grow differently than the tag might indicate. The perennials in question are Baptisia australis/blue false indigo, Coreopsis grandiflora solanna/golden sphere tickseed, and Asclepias tuberosa/butterflyweed. According to the tags they were different enough in height to layer them in front of one another but any insight here would be greatly appreciated! I’m happy to split them up in the garden if that works better.

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Comments (4)

peren.all Zone 5a Ontario Canada
last year
Great combo but the Coreopsis & Asclepias will be similar heights so one would block out the other. You could plant them in front of the Baptisia but side by side.
nnmjdklil
Original Author
last year
Ok not a bad idea, thank you. For what it’s worth almost the entire rest of my garden is flowerless, perennial or otherwise. I have quite a few conifers and quite a few Japanese maples and then really just some Arkansas blue star, one little area with black eyed susans and a couple heavenly bamboo so I’m wondering now if maybe it would be better to just keep the new flowers separate from each other
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marmiegard_z7b
last year
I’m just in early stages of experimenting with some of those plants. I think it’s hard to predict who’ll block who, since the plants may experience the growing conditions differently. I don’t know what size plant you purchased. For me , Baptisia grows slowly, at least at first, but may catch up. The milkweed may grow faster.
But, do you need to think doc them as precisely in front of each other and just viewed like soldiers? They’ll spread out a bit differently , and Baptisia can get to be more shrub- like, I think. So if you just offset them a bit, they should still work. And perhaps you will add to the grouping.
nnmjdklil
Original Author
last year
Good question! I was thinking offset some yes, I don’t have anything uniform in my garden so far lol. I even figured that if they do grow at consecutively larger heights then maybe I’ll get one or two more of the middle ones and two or three more of the shortest ones, at some point? Admittedly I rarely plant anything that I don’t move once or twice before it stays in its forever home haha.
Having said that, the blue one and the tickseed are both in 1 liter pots and the butterfly weed is in a tiny little square pot. Although both of the larger ones had my son’s basketball land on them at some point in the two days after I bought them, but he has no idea who must’ve done it! ;)
So for all I know they don’t even take now. That was yesterday and I’ve since moved them far from the basketball rim but I was going to plant them early this evening when I realized maybe I should ask the question first here…