5 Plants I Love and 1 that I Regret Buying

The list of plants I love to grow has become smaller over the years, mostly because I' have made the decision to be more "selective" and to refocus on growing more of what grows/survives for me instead of having a large variety of plants. I have a huge problem with deer and this year (for the first time in 14 years in this home) I have a problem with rabbits as well. My filters are now....zones 4-8 minimum (I'm 6b), deer and rabbit resistent, insect damage resistent, and powdery mildew/disease resistent. What is working for me right now is boxwood, daffodil, iris, native wisteria, nasturtium, barberry, japanese holly, green giant arb, spartan juniper, wiegela, dwarf crape myrtle, cimicifuga, prairie winds 'lemon squeeze' and 'cheyenne sky' fountain grasses, blue star juniper, dwarf mugo pine, and hellebore. I recently added some baptisia and I'm waiting to see how that goes. So far, so good. I don't mind tending my garden, but I don't want to feel like I'm going to war with it each year.

I love Agastache’Blue Fortune’. It seeds around and the seedlings can be variable in height and sometimes color. It also has had chartreuse seedlings like the cultivar ‘Golden Jubilee’. The golden form is not as tall in my garden.

For the beebalm, I would do a chelsea chop in mid spring for the floppiness and thin out half the stems at that time to create better airflow for the powdery mildew.

Powdery mildew is definitely a problem on almost all monardas. To me, they make up for it by blooming basically all summer long and feeding thousands of bees. As for the flopping I’ll say that many times a native plant will grow much taller in the first two or three years after planting than they typically grow for the rest of their lives or in the wild. Once they reach equilibrium with the other plants, they usually hold themselves up a little better. :) Good luck and thanks for the video!

Love that Queeny Lemon Peach!

Thx for sharing Texas greats are… Lantana, Cone Flowers, Day Lilies, Rock Rose, Salvias, Hummingbird Bush, Rose of Sharon, Hibiscus, and the list goes on and on and on… 😊

This is my first season with Heliopsis 'burning hearts' & I love it as much as you love yours. It looks great with little care & keeps blooming

The pollinators absolutely love all your flowers. I love watching them fly around throughout the day!

I bought some shorter varieties of bee balm that I could put in with my roses without overwhelming the area and they have done an amazing job of still attracting tons of pollinators for me!

I am loving that penstemon midnight! I need her in my life! She will go well with the hibiscus and elderberry in our garden. I love that dark foliage contrast! Thanks for sharing such informative video. Will keep an eye out for the penstemon. Have an awesome day Sue!

I love my monarda, it's called 'Mahogany ' and has never gotten powdery mildew, has gorgeous deep fushia colored blooms and very strong stalks. Last year it grew to nearly 7 feet high(more rain), this year under 6, with drought. As I have horses, most of my garden has very rich soil and I rarely need to stake anything, even peonies with massive and abundant blooms. Your garden is really lovely. Happy gardening.

What ultimately worked for me is to lean on the studies from Mt Cuba — which evaluated the plants for vigor, mildew resistance and stem strength. That’s how I landed on Purple Rooster. That’s my color. But there are others that might be worth a try that performed even better. I use branded plants judiously but this is one of the cases where I would caution against unless regional field data is available particularly in regards to mildew resistance AND length of bloom which can be short in more compact varieties

I certainly ditto your sentiments on the beebalm! Though mine doesnt usually flop, it is covered in powdery mildew despite the drought we've been going thru! Since it has such a short bloom time, I wont miss it when I boot it out of my garden! ha ha!

zone 4 - Minnesota, I just picked up that same monarda, from the local pond, we have a ton of it growing, so I thought I would spread it out to my garden , since I have a tall red monarda that is doing so great, as far as favorite plants- I also love our native perrenial verbena, I got it from again the hills around us, some native coreopsis seeded itself in my garden and finally I love our native rudbeckia, blooms a ton and easy to pick up from the side of the road, we have a tall rudbeckia variety with its petals turned downwards, I also plucked a few for my garden, basically this year I got a lot of plants foraging around, because I agree that plants prices are out of control and I do want to have a plant that will grow no matter what, very often I see garden centers bring flowers of zone 5a thinking it will survive here but no, they do not

I love bee balm and sadly so do the deers here is southwest Nova Scotia. Disappointingly, after 3 years of hoping to see bee balm flowers the deers ate the buds before the flowers could bloom. We planted spearmint, peppermint and chocolate mint in the back garden to try to deter deers, but the deers love the mint and eat it to the ground. At least the local deers here have fresh breath. This morning we discovered more deer damage, broken down stakes, netting and mesh and devoured linden tree, pussy Willows and weeping Willow young plantings. I was never partial to lambs ear but our new favourite plants are ornamental grasses and lambs ear. The deers haven’t eaten them…yet. We planted echinacea 3 years ago and haven’t yet had a flower. The deers broke down the barrier and ate all the buds. We ripped out the black eyed Susan’s last week because the deers broke down the barriers and devoured the buds, every single bud! So my favourites were black eyed Susan, echinaceas, bee balms. All three listed as deer resistant and all three proven to be deer magnets. Your selection of favourites are lovely as is your garden. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for sharing! Happy Gardening 🌻🌻🌻

Such a great video!

I have the wild bergamot and live in the hot sunny 40 degrees Celsius🎉 Okanagan of British Columbia . It does not get much rain in the wild , please plant it where you don’t water it , it will thrive without mildew . I hope this helps. It is planted with my Showy Milkweed, Wild baby’s breath ,and Queen Ann’s Lace . All these do well without great soil and pampering them .

They are beautiful Sue 🥰

Really lovely - thank you for sharing!