I'm experiencing some climate shock. No, not the winter. That's just misery, not shocking. I'm talking about a map I saw in a new catalog. The catalog is from High Country Gardens and if you live West of the Mississippi you should check it out.
The map is not a zone map but a wetness map. It tells you if you can successfully grow plants they list as Xeric or Very Xeric.
And yet again Blogger insists on posting this image sideways. I need to figure out how to fix that.
I can't. Which is going to be hard since some of my favorite perennials are in this catalog - lots of types of Agastache, Penstemon, and Salvias. I realized that when I picture a garden I base my mental plant selection on what I've seen in drier climates (and on drier blogs - all you prolific bloggers from Texas!). Now I'm holding my breath to see if some of the drought tolerant plants are going to survive the water logged soil of the New England spring (don't worry, I'll automatically start breathing again once I pass out). I guess I need to find some local gardens, New England garden blogs (if you know of any give me a comment) and shift my thoughts away from drought and heat tolerant plants. It's a whole new world of options out there.
Oh, and yes, we did get some very windy weather out of that last storm. It drove this branch into the ground.
But we didn't get snow, we got rain. The rain washed the snow away and I went out for a peak at the garden. Here's what I found:
These Violas (Johnny Jump Ups?) show up in the perennial beds.
My neighbor considers them weeds. I call them volunteers.
I am too lazy to get up and look at my catalog, so I enlarged the picture of yours. It says I can grow xeric plants here but I bet they would have drowned this year. It has been raining a lot since October or November. The back third of my yard (I have 3 acres) stays soggy. And when it rains, the water just sits there for hours.
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting my blog. I need houseplants this year because it has been cold here too. The low was 26 last night and the high was in the 50s. I know that isn't as cold as you get, but I hate cold weather:)
I have to exercise GREAT care in reading that catalog... I'm always tempted to buy things that will do nothing but die in my wet spot in Michigan!
ReplyDeleteI garden in heavy wet clay over bedrock (so don't talk to me about compost--all of it just gets blown down to the curb by the 10 hp leave blower we need to use to get the leaves moved each season. Sigh). I have grown a few things from High Country Gardens--great catalog--as well as heaths and lavenders but in order to get them through the wet springs here we need to do like they do in France with the grape vines--mound up under them with rock. After awhile you decide it's just not worth it. I'm just south of you in central CT.
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