Thursday 26 April 2012

Medium sized shrubs for the roof garden

Having seen the soil depth I'm working with (pretty decent!) and the vast emptiness after having planted almost all of my initial plant selections, I clearly need more shrubs in the 4-6ft tall range.

At the nursery yesterday I saw a few other interesting candidates.  First up is Rubrus idaeus 'Anne', which is a yellow raspberry.




I researched it and it seems like a good candidate.  Not too big and with allegedly very tasty fruit.  Today I returned and made the purchase.  The leaves are a really pretty chartreuse color, but maybe they mature to the darker green shown above.

I also came across some Hibiscus moscheutos 'Blue River II' that I later learned get rave reviews:



Excellent.  I picked up one of those today.

Three of the nurseries that I ordered from in the first round sent me nicely leafy, mature and really carefully packed plants, so they were the ones whose catalogues I turned to first for 4-6 foot tall plants.  This morning I placed an order with Niche Gardens for a few things.  Among them is this white-flowered Seashore Mallow (Kosteletzkya virginica 'Immaculate'):



I probably don't need another rose, but this Persian Rose (Rosa 'Nastarana') and it's description in the Niche catalogue hooked me.   It can be grown upright-ish as a shrub, blooms from spring until frost and is very fragrant:


White Bush Clover is another plant I'm going to try.  It has a very interesting arching growth habit, which appeals to me, and like the others, it gets to be 4-5 feet tall.


Hopefully these five newbies will fill things in nicely.

Not in the shrub category, but my husband has been begging for a grape vine to train up the pergola.  (He adores fruit.)  The nursery had several, of which the best seems to be 'Niagara'. 


(Green grapes will work better with the color scheme.  They had 'Reliance' too, which is a red grape that seems to be both delicious and have nice foliage.)  Today when I was back at the nursery, I got a Niagara vine.

Eventually I am also going to need some shade plants to plant along the front of the patio, under/behind the high top table.  I'm hesitating about ordering the shade plants, though, because until we get the table, there is no shade there and I don't want to kill anything. But that part of the garden looks really bare and it's front and center.  Maybe the solution for this season is annuals.  I'd need to source some really interesting ones, though, to keep from feeling bored.  Will report back later on this.

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