Your Home, Garden and Travel

I am frequently asked for the house paint colors!

Although I try to answer questions sent to me by email, I have a backlog lately due to other distractions. Here are a few recent questions with the answers.

1. What is the exterior paint color used on your house? I still receive this question quite often due to my past participation on the GardenWeb forums. The sage-gray body color with off-white trim is a custom mix and I posted the formula here: House Paint Colors. A reader who saw the story about my deer resistant garden in the July 2010 issue of Southern Living Magazine even wanted to know the house plan! While the outside looks similar to the plan, I completely redesigned the interior of our house so that it bears little resemblance to the original plan.
2. Do deer eat zinnias? The deer tend to leave my zinnias alone until August, when food is scarce. Once they have little food, they will eat the zinnias. I grow Benary's Giant variety. The rabbits, on the other hand, will take down the four-foot high plants, at any time, as though they are cutting down trees!
3. How to Grow Lavender? This is a frequent question and an excellent story, written by local lavender farmer, Annie Greer Baggett, provides the best information. Annie wrote the story for my blog and I keep it linked in the left sidebar under "Reader Favorites".
4. Companion plants for rose campion? After lavender, I receive many questions and blog searches for information on rose campion (lychnis coronaria).This flower is a self-sowing annual and will winter over as a perennial/biennial in warmer zones. I like to use yarrow (achillea 'Pomegranate'), big lamb's ears, and autumn sage (salvia greggii), nepeta and Spanish Lavender as companions. Larkspur, poppies and cornflowers—self-sowing annuals also look good with, and bloom at the same time, as rose campion. 

There are links in the left side bar to BLOG PAGES of popular topics which will also answer many of the search terms/keyword searches on my blog. I created these pages for my own record-keeping as well and make updates from time-to-time.

Flowers from Seeds:  Flowers that I grow from seeds (with bloom photos).

Deer Resistant Plants: I try to update this list as the information changes and when I add new plants. Your results may vary from my results.

Rabbit Resistant Plants: By far, rabbits do more damage in my garden than deer.

Agastache Garden Plan: This is a labeled planting plan (photo) with a grouping of some of my favorite agastache varieties. I have more favorites, such as agastache 'Cotton Candy' that is not shown on this plan.

Monet's Gardens and Paris: This is a page with links to all the stories (with many photos) that I wrote about our visit to Paris and Monet's Gardens in Giverny, France in May 2009.

Monet's Gardens in Giverny, France

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel. Deer and rabbit resistance varies based upon the animal population and availability of food. All company or product or patented names mentioned are registered trademarks, copyrights, or patents owned by those respective companies or persons.

If this is the weather pattern of the future, then I need to rethink my garden. It was 96°F  yesterday and will be 95 today.

2010 has set a record of ninety days with temperatures over 90°F. There has been virtually no rain in September (0.13 inches of rainfall).

Between the heat and drought, it is looking grim. Worse than grim, my garden looks downright bad. I cannot water it enough to keep it going. Rather than expand the garden this year or next, I think I will have to group the survivors together and make it less garden to maintain.

The drought has brought out the rabbits and the deer, foraging for food wherever they can find it. The rabbits are doing more damage as they cut down 4-foot high zinnias like little lumberjacks. I see blooms going down, and I find rabbits munching! The rabbits are even after the leaves on some salvias, such as nemorosa and guaranitica varieties.

The deer are eating the swamp sunflower, but I knew they would based upon past years. They left the zinnias alone until the last week, but the rabbits had already ruined the mass plantings. With no food in the wild, they will eat zinnias. I can't begrudge them this, given that they are all so hungry.

Fortunately, I planted a few annual purple fountain grasses this spring to perk up the agastache and salvia greggii groupings for fall. Without the grasses, it would really be a dull garden right now!

The last time I took a garden photo September 10, 2010

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel. Deer and rabbit resistance varies based upon the animal population and availability of food. All company or product or patented names mentioned are registered trademarks, copyrights, or patents owned by those respective companies or persons.

Won By Her Wits "Charm" American Greyhound February 3, 1999 - September 22, 2010

Charm and Richard September 2009 ...during the days that we almost lost her. She made it another full year. She didn't give up!

Charm made her own racetrack in our meadow

Charm and Chris-- it turned out to be a farewell for them. August 2010

Charm will always be my "gardening greyhound"

Sedum 'Green Expectations' grown up. This was just a tip off the old plant in 2009.

Buy one. Make more. Sedum keeps on giving and giving. In June 2009, I wrote about pinching back the tips of tall sedum to make more plants while keeping the mother plant sturdy and shaped. Those tiny tips are now mature and blooming for early autumn.

A tip taken from last year's tip!

Of the three sedum varieties that I pinched back, 'Green Expectations' has performed the best in one year. So well, that I have also pinched the tips of the new plants this year!

I actually use my pruners to make a clean cut, remove the bottom leaves and just stick the cuttings straight into garden soil.

The sedum performs best in drier soil and full sun, though they do well with afternoon shade. Choose companions that also work in the same conditions.

I grow sedum with salvia, perennial heliotrope, lavender, four o'clocks, agastache and purple heart.

The good news is that the rabbits leave the tall, blooming sedum alone, so I can grow these quite well inside the cottage garden fence. The bad news is that deer will probably eat the blooms, just when you are ready to enjoy the plant. Late summer and early fall is prime time for the deer to forage for food in flower gardens as the wild vegetation diminishes. Plants that deer ignore all summer may be more interesting in early autumn.

My 'Purple Emperor' sedum tips are doing well, but are not maturing as quickly as the 'Green Expecations'. I have blooms on only one of seven tips that I started in 2009. Sedum 'Bekka' has not done well in the summer humidity.

I would happily add more sedum varieties if I had the space! These are economical and carefree plants to fill a sunny garden.

Sedum 'Green Expectations' with deep pink Four O'Clocks and lavender-blue perennial heliotrope 'Azure Skies'

Sedum 'Green Expectations' with salvia farinacea 'Victoria Blue'

Sedum 'Purple Emperor' with gaillardia 'Grape Sensation' and foliage of cottage pinks (dianthus)

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel. Deer and rabbit resistance varies based upon the animal population and availability of food. All company or product or patented names mentioned are registered trademarks, copyrights, or patents owned by those respective companies or persons.

Lady Banks rose blooms yellow in spring. April 2010

A vine-covered cottage is such a romantic notion. Cedar shakes. A stone chimney. A garden gate canopy of blooms. I love the look, but is it practical?

All went well for four years. In the fifth year, the Lady Banksia Rose bush (a branching, not climbing rose) had shot up over thirty feet to the top of the gable and was trying to take over the upstairs window and chimney.

One would think a house safe from a non-climbing bush. Not so. The branches were undermining the cedar shakes on the house!

It had to go. The yellow blooms lasted only a few weeks each spring. Not much reward for the flowers, but I like the greenery branching over the top of the gable gate trellis.

My husband and I worked for a few hours to remove the bush. He started upstairs, reaching out the window to try to pull and cut branches that were under the eaves and latched onto the stone chimney. Our ladder doesn't reach those towering heights and a few remnants are still stuck on the house! Hopefully, they'll wither and die and not take root!

This is the second Lady Banks that we've removed in two years. Our landscaper planted one by the front garden gate and this one by the gable gate. Both were too damaging. Besides the cedar shake damage, the roots were pushing the stone corner columns and upsetting the fence and pathways as well.

I don't know if I'll plant another climbing perennial, but I want something to crawl over the top of the trellis above the garden gate in the summer months. Annual vines?

I need a vine that won't grow up under the cedar shakes, but will decorate the once-again bare trellis above the garden gate.

Clematis, but not the large Autumn Clematis, may be practical enough—perennial vines that are cut back each year, rather than evergreen that would climb and attach to the house once again.

Any ideas?

Lady Banks growing up over the window and reaching for the chimney. June 2010

Lady Banks gone and the trellis is bare. September 2010

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel.

Variegated obedient plant (physotegia virginiana)

Obedient plant is one of those perennials that has a reputation for spreading aggressively in a garden. I wish!

For three years, I have waited and waited for variegated obedient plant (physotegia virginiana) to create a mass planting. I have three blooms on one clump and one bloom on another clump; no blooms on a third clump.

The variegated foliage is much appreciated in the deer resistant garden, though the deer will definitely eat this plant if they are hungry enough.  At least they allowed me the opportunity to see the beautiful blooms this year, which only makes me want more obedient plant!

According to my research, obedient plant can be grown in zones 2-9, which makes it sound very hardy. The seeds on this variegated variety are sterile, so it does not self-sow.

Last fall, I moved the plants to the part shade of butterfly bushes. That seems to have helped with the blooms, but it probably does well in full sun in cooler zones.

I've not had to stake the 36" high plants. They are narrow enough to fit in among my amsonia hubrichtii with perennial ageratum at the base. Good combinations as the amsonia foliage provides a lovely lush green backdrop until autumn, when it turns a brilliant gold. The buttons of lavender-blue ageratum bloom in late summer and blend well with these spires of lavender.

Do you grow any varieties of obedient plant? Is it behaving or misbehaving in your garden?

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel. Deer and rabbit resistance varies based upon the animal population and availability of food. All company or product or patented names mentioned are registered trademarks, copyrights, or patents owned by those respective companies or persons.