Re: hellebores was: Shade Garden Gone?

Thanks, Marge, I took a look at your informative article about hellebores.
And when it gets good daylight I guess I'll scout around that loser of an
ex-fern bed and see if I have any stakes left with plant names on them.
Since my big dogs sometimes walk across that bed in an effort to communicate
with the yard dog next door, it's amazing that anything grows there.  But it
does get too much water when we're in high watering season.

Perhaps someone with the city could tell me what's in the water that makes
those half circles.  Walking the dogs behind the block I'd see regular
patches on the back fences where the range of the sprinklers hit. I think
all the homes in the subdivision were built with sprinkler systems
installed.  We moved here a little over two years ago and the soil and
climate are really different from Houston's heavy clay and high humidity.

Our landscape man who runs a regular lawn service says that Conroe soil is
very thin and needs a lot of amendment.  He used to own a plant nursery in
the area, so he must know.  I find the soil much lighter and easier to dig
in.

In Houston you pray for a little shade in the heat of summer to help your
plants survive.  Here, you learn  to plant things that will thrive in the
shade, which is what brought me to hostas and then to hellebores.  So far,
I'm liking the hostas a lot better and they did return bigger and better
this spring.  And an unknown one evidently seeded and I have a crop of
little ones.  Of course they've all gone dormant now, or are in the process
of doing so.

Ann James
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index