2025 Plans and Design Ideas (updated)
1. Replace Fall Anemone with Rose
Update:
Did this, but planted a Wood's rose rather than the blushing pink knockout (I put that elsewhere in back, under the privet).Wood's rose blooms in shade, is a large upright suckering plant that forms thickets, and there's some room for that where the anemone had been. It's a filler to screen the window and add some bulk there. Fragrant. Red fall color.
Although I may keep after it with pruning. It can get really big. Will it spread and sucker there under the cottonwood in shade?
The fall anemone (and all its runners) was spreading too much, despite my assumption it would not in this dry climate. But of course I water it. The foliage is not great, crisps if too dry, and blackens as soon as frost comes. I cut it back, but then that leaves a blank spot under the window all winter. Flowering is brief and sparse.
So it's gone now -- came out easily.
My first thought was to replace it with the Pink Blushing Knockout rose I had in CT for the height I want to come up over the sill of the window, and the fullness to anchor that end of the garden. I remember it had a lovely fragrance.
2. Dress the Blank Garage Wall
The privet by the garage door is gone. Jeronimo took it out when he came to clean up the leaves on December 6. I dithered over lots of possibilities -- hollyhocks, a Windwalker salvia, the white bowl, moving the bbq grill there, placing a rain barrel or rain chain at the canale, so many possibilities.
Update:
In the end I put the patio table there by the door with some pots on it and around it, planted a red flowered pentstemon in front of the table and moved the iron trellis behind the redbud.
Here's the blank wall I looked at all winter:
The table, along with two of the patio chairs had been below the rr ties by my potting bench, and I loved sitting there in shade on summer days. It was a useful stopping place as I worked at the back of the garden. It drew the eye toward the fence.
But it was crowded in that narrow spot and this winter it is covered in sticky, gooey crabapples from the neighbor's tree. The chairs were a mess too. So I moved them away from that spot and the table had to go somewhere.
Here's a bit of reminder of what the privet had looked like in better days:
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| 2017 |
The spot under a canale was a problem when hard rains from above it broke off branches on the right side. The left side crowded the garage door. I had to do extensive pruning all the time, and when full it looked lollipop shaped. And after a snowstorm that broke off even more branches on the thin side, it looked pretty bad.
So I'll have to work with that blank wall and see how I can make a focal point there to look at, but keep it open for the garage vents, and not crowd the door. Will the table, dressed up a bit, with a red salvia in front of it work?
3. Annuals / Tender Perennials
I always liked 'David 'Verity' cuphea which has dark orange flowers and a nice shrub size. And I like the tiny draping one I had in a terra cotta trough, with deep red flowers, called 'Cubano Cristo'.
Update:I lost the Cubano Cristo over winter. I got a David Verity and put it in the white bowl -- which I moved to the center of the circle garden where the birdbath had been.
I liked how this cuphea looked when I had a smaller (transplanted) one in a turquoise pot one year.
The ceramic bowl of crocosmias will remain set in the blue pot behind the deck.
Gomphrena Strawberry Fields also did not do well in ground. Try it again in the blue container on the patio tucked in with the bush clematis there. Done.
4. Complete the circle
Take out two rocks on the birdbath circle -- one on either side of the "entrance" and put plants in the gravel to complete the circle. Maybe take out the first two rocks on either side of the flat stepping stone -- or maybe leave the ones closest to the flat stone and just take out the next.
Update:I didn't do this.
In any event, put some low plants out into the gravel courseway to round the circle. The outer ring around the birdbath now truncates where it meets the rock border. This was by design, but I like the idea of bringing the circle out into the gravel to meet the stone walkway.
Maybe two matching plants flanking the entrance stepper stone? Two compact gauras -- Little Janie? Bluestone Perennials has it. Low, compact.
Santa Fe --specifically zip 87507 -- is now rated for winter hardiness at 7a.
Salvia greggii 'Radio Red' is listed as hardy to zone 7, a minimum of zero degrees. Some say zone 6.
We've had short spells of below zero temps on occasion over the years I've been here. Let's see if they survive. The kitchen courtyard is sunny and protected by fence and wall, which might be enough protection.
👉 Some sources say to mulch plants in the ground with a lot of leaves (I have those) and a bucket over. I should do that.
Update:Two in the kitchen courtyard are coming back although I did not mulch them with a bucket over. The one in the circle garden is not. All three of the potted Radio Red salvias I overwintered in the garage failed to come back.
6. Red Cascade Rose
I'm still toying with having this scrambling rose trained up over the kitchen door canopy.
It isn't a climber so much as a cascading draper, and my thought when I first planted this in the corner was to have it go over to the fence and crawl along the top of the posts. I have it angled over that way as it fills out now and spreads.
But how would I get it up and over to the canopy structure? Should I even try? The branches are brittle and thorny, very hard to maneuver.
Some alternatives I had been thinking about:
Here's a half trellis on Amazon, almost 8 feet tall with a span at the top of 5 feet. I wouldn't be able to screw it into anything, but set it against the slope of the canopy roof. $162.
This could totally work!
