Hi All
New member here....
Im looking for ideas for a lower growing perennial to plant in front of a long drift of Agastache Sweet Lili.The garden is bed is in a hot /sunny/windy /dry area in Southern Tas.
Thanks in advance.
I have all of these growing with Agastache in my Adelaide Hills garden. Also windy, hot site, but cold and wet in winter:
Nepeta walkers low
Scabious dark knight
Achillea terracotta
Echinops Veitches blue
Artemisia silver queen
Perovskia
Salvia caradonna
Thanks Tracey,i think i’ll end up with predominantly blues in there so will likely use Nepeta WL ,Perovskia Blue Spires and possibly Salvia Caradonna .Sedum Matrona Achillea hella glasoff and Agastache Blue Fortune are likely to join them with Carex petreii .The Beds will also feature Cotinus Grace.
Hey Richard, I really like all of Tracey’s suggestions above. I’d also like to add one of the low miscanthuses, like ‘Eileen Quin’. While Agastache (and particularly A ‘Sweet Lili’) produces a lot of colour, there’s no marked or notable form in either the flowers or the foliage, so it creates just a fuzz of pink, I find it best as back-up colour for something with some design guts about it, so it’s not just floral froth against floral froth, and the grass would do that well
Hi Michael ,i’m planning to use Calamagrostis Karl Foerster as a back drop to the Sweet Lili.Originally i had planned to use Miscanthus Adagio ,but i’m concerned Miscanthus won’t get enough water to develop properly.I do like the idea of a structured grass in from though ,perhaps a Panicum virgatum cv of some sort could work?
If there’s not enough water for miscanthus, it’ll be worse sill with Panicum. All the forms we have here in Australia are pretty thirsty. They’re trialling fabulous super-drought-tolerant forms/species at Hermannshof, but it’s unlikely, given our biosecurity, that we’ll ever see them here. But the point of my suggestion was fundamentally about having something florally-neutral in front of the Agastache, so that it’s not building flowers on flowers. To that end, given your use of KF behind the Agastache, Tracey’s suggestion of the Artemisia might be a really good one, and then you could revisit flowers in front of that. A tallish Sedum like ‘Autumn Joy’ or ‘Matrona’ could be an alternative approach, as the chunky blobs of colour they present are a good contrast to the soft, frothy colour presentation of the Agastache
Thanks Michael ,thats good to know about the Panicum water requirements.Your advice re florally neutral layers is very helpful ,to be honest i hadn’t really considered that ,but i can see how effective it would be – i appreciate you pointing that out.Thanks for replying to the thread !
I have all of these growing with Agastache in my Adelaide Hills garden. Also windy, hot site, but cold and wet in winter:
Nepeta walkers low
Scabious dark knight
Achillea terracotta
Echinops Veitches blue
Artemisia silver queen
Perovskia
Salvia caradonna
Depends on your colour scheme …
Thanks Tracey,i think i’ll end up with predominantly blues in there so will likely use Nepeta WL ,Perovskia Blue Spires and possibly Salvia Caradonna .Sedum Matrona Achillea hella glasoff and Agastache Blue Fortune are likely to join them with Carex petreii .The Beds will also feature Cotinus Grace.
Hey Richard, I really like all of Tracey’s suggestions above. I’d also like to add one of the low miscanthuses, like ‘Eileen Quin’. While Agastache (and particularly A ‘Sweet Lili’) produces a lot of colour, there’s no marked or notable form in either the flowers or the foliage, so it creates just a fuzz of pink, I find it best as back-up colour for something with some design guts about it, so it’s not just floral froth against floral froth, and the grass would do that well
Hi Michael ,i’m planning to use Calamagrostis Karl Foerster as a back drop to the Sweet Lili.Originally i had planned to use Miscanthus Adagio ,but i’m concerned Miscanthus won’t get enough water to develop properly.I do like the idea of a structured grass in from though ,perhaps a Panicum virgatum cv of some sort could work?
If there’s not enough water for miscanthus, it’ll be worse sill with Panicum. All the forms we have here in Australia are pretty thirsty. They’re trialling fabulous super-drought-tolerant forms/species at Hermannshof, but it’s unlikely, given our biosecurity, that we’ll ever see them here. But the point of my suggestion was fundamentally about having something florally-neutral in front of the Agastache, so that it’s not building flowers on flowers. To that end, given your use of KF behind the Agastache, Tracey’s suggestion of the Artemisia might be a really good one, and then you could revisit flowers in front of that. A tallish Sedum like ‘Autumn Joy’ or ‘Matrona’ could be an alternative approach, as the chunky blobs of colour they present are a good contrast to the soft, frothy colour presentation of the Agastache
Thanks Michael ,thats good to know about the Panicum water requirements.Your advice re florally neutral layers is very helpful ,to be honest i hadn’t really considered that ,but i can see how effective it would be – i appreciate you pointing that out.Thanks for replying to the thread !