Don't be fooled. Inside this thin coating of sweetness is a fiery core of total insanity.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Perennials and Ornamental Grasses Around the Waterfall

This past week I concentrated on buying and planting various perennials and ornamental grasses for around the top and sides of the waterfall.

Black Mondo grass, Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra 'All Gold' and 'Beni Kaze', which has some reddish tones), and Blue-eyed grass. I need to get some floater type pond plants to put inside the top of the waterfall, but I'm not sure yet what to get. My two favorites from Massachusetts were water hyacinth, which I'm afraid might get too big with its tall flowers and looooong roots, and parrots feather, which is prohibited here in Washington. Water lettuce maybe? Fairy moss/Azolla? Or maybe small leaf sensitive plant (Neptunia aquatica)? I need something to hide the plastic waterfall chamber.


In some of the planting pockets amongst the rocks, I planted my favorite hardy Geranium, Geranium phaeum 'Samobor'. I just love the dark splotch on the leaves in combination with the dark flowers.

I also planted Campanula rotundifolia.

Rodgersia aesculifolia

Astilboides tabularis

Both the Rodgersia and the Astilboides like boggy conditions, so I dug out a large planting hole for each of them, lined it with black trash bags, stabbed the plastic with the scissors several times to make a slow draining planting hole, and then filled the hole and the area around each plant with a mix of soil and compost. So far they both seem to like their new homes. I also bought a Gunnera, but haven't planted it yet. It's sitting in the stream staying moist. I need to give it the same boggy conditions.

I bought a shrub that isn't a native, for a bed close to the house: Camellia sasanqua 'Yuletide'. It will have pretty red flowers next winter.

And finally I have oriental poppy sprouts! The milk jug cloches worked!
I think I will give them another couple of weeks, and then remove the cloches, and I might just use them over again to start annual poppies. I also have carrot and lettuce sprouts in the raised beds, and tomato sprouts inside my bottom-heated incubation chamber.