photos from a Calgary Garden

[jc (pmm)]

here are a few shots of my garden
(not sure in what order the photos will show up!)
persian yellow rose with peony, linda cambel (red rose), oxalis adenophyla (particularly happy to be able to grow this zone 7 plant in my zone 3 garden, lupins with hesperis and thalicrum (delavayi ?)

[Lesley Cox]

Welcome to the Forum JC. Does pmm mean you are only a night bird? The Oxalis is a beauty. One I lose time and time again though others from the south of South America do very well in my part of the world.

[jc (pmm)]

I've found that a lot of plants such as this oxalis adenophyla(zone 7) do well if kept in poor dry soil. At least that is how it survives my minus 40C (zone 3) winters.

pmm stands for perenial mission man. I guess Id like to get around the 20 thousand species but whether or not I'll ever achive that is another question. I just like the chalange of finding the seeds with the right genetics and the right environmental conditions that allow the plant to survive which is other wise thought as not viable in my climate.

[Giles]

Well done!
I see you've succeeded with the photographs.
 

[Ragged Robin]

Welcome JC, your garden in Calgary looks wonderful and the challenges you have set yourself are obviously paying off    It is the most beautiful spot and Im looking forward to seeing more of the area in which you live as well.

[fleurbleue]

Welcome JC in this great forum 

Kind regards
pmw 

[Robert G]

Welcome to the forum JC. Great pictures! Is it just perennials or do you experiment with woody plants as well? Your climate is a little more harsh than mine and I am interested what you can grow there that suprises you? Take care.

[cohan]

welcome JC--so we albertans are increasing on the forum

[jc (pmm)]

thanks all for the great welcome

Yes I love trees and shrubs so let me start with what trees I'm growing succesfully in zone 3

-Catalpa species (dwarft) (that is what it said on the package) . The seeds came from Kristl and  so I don't know the species. About 5 years old.
-Peache tree Just from pits from store bought peaches. I tried for many years and they would not survive my winters until one year I struck gold. I'd say 5 years old by now.
Red mulberry- kentucky coffee tree- red, silver and mountain maples (which is very difficult out here) laburnum- colutea x media- kolkwitzia amabils-clethra anifolia-kadota fig-calluna vulgaris - robinia pseudoacacia "aurea"-chaenomeles japonica and a few more but can't recall their names right now.

I'm trying this year caryopteris x clandonensis- pommegranite and pecans. There are so many i'd love to try such as indigofera decora and few trees I want to try from new Zeland such as  enkianthus perulatus.

Herbaceous  and rock garden plants are alltogether another endless whishes and hopes but a few at a time and I'm having a great time.

jc

[Lori S.]

Very interesting, and welcome to the forum.  
What general part of town are you in?  Are you growing all of these without protecting them through the winter?

I found Clethra alnifolia to be hardy here but not worth the garden space as the flower buds were so late as to be mostly killed by frost.  Are yours able to bloom well?
Calluna vulgaris has generally succumbed to low humidity and lack of snow cover through the winter for me; I'm not sure it's really a problem of hardiness so much as conditions.  Have you figured out some techniques to overcome that? 
What "zone 9" plants are you wintering successfully here?
It will all be fascinating to hear about!

[jc (pmm)]

I'm in Seapard on the South east edge of the city. Very much wind swepte. We are typicly 3to 4 degrees cooler than Calgary and we also get a fraction of the rain calgary gets. We're more like Strathmore weather wise. I don't do anything to protect the plants during winter except pile up the snow around the more vulnerable plants. During summer i water from my rain barels. This year was so dry (around 3" of rain so far) In the NE of calgary my freind says he got only 9" this year, that's about 1/2  the other years. The west  and nw gets about double of that.

oop I've got company I'll continue later

jc

[jc (pmm)]

The clethra flowered well for a couple of years but then I did as I usualy do and keep my watering to new seedlings and transplants.  I lost my papaw because of that and my clethra nearly died. It's coming back as I watered it quite a bit this summer. Definitly a high maintnance plant as far as water demand. I don't have time to baby plants so I might look at doing what I did to other plants (kalmia augustifolia and rhododendrum maximum)that I also  nearly lost in past years due to  high moisture demant. I dug up a hole and baried in, a peat moss bale, plastic bag and all. That way other plants can't get to the water, and  keeps out the alkaline salts, it's great.

to be continued

[jc (pmm)]

count'ed

caluna vulgaris seems happy here. I planted it in "spruce soil"  that is, scrapings fron under spruce trees, which is mostly spruce needles in various stage of decomposition.
Kadota fig is zone 9 and is about 10 years old. I had read that the roots were very aggressive and so I planted it in dry clay. I used to get fruits but since  we've been having a few years of droughts in a row ,it has stop. I'm thinking of tranplanting it in a more hospitable soil. It grows more like a herbacous plant, shooting up from close to the ground . In the beginning I used to cover the first 3 feet with saw dust (i'm a furniture maker) and so in the spring it would have a head start. Now I let it die to snow covering level which is quite often nil and so It has it's work cut out, yet doing fine.
Peach, papaw mulberry catalpa are all zone 5 and yet doing fine. Plants or at least trees that grow too fast in too good soil seem to be unable to survive our winters. Letting them starve from water in the fall seems to prepare them for the winter. There are exception like clethra but my understanding is that clethra tends to grow naturaly in wet conditions .

[jc (pmm)]

Some plants from my rock garden