These plants are tried and true for full sun roofdeck.  They do require water!  Based on 10 years gardening on my South End, Boston roofdeck.

Perennials (come back every year)

• Blueberries – great berries and fall color, underplant with alyssum and lantana
• Shrub roses – white seafoam and pink fairy.
• Scabiosa – purple round, spiky flowers
• Coreopsis – many varieties – prolific bloomer all summer
• Heliopsis Lorraine Sunshine – underplant with annuals blue Felicitas and lobelia
• Coneflower/Echinacea – white, pink
• Rudbeckia – many varieties
• Indian Blanket Flower “Gaillardia artista” summers kiss – with lavender
• Daisies- many perennial varieties
• Walker’s Low – Nepata Faassenii…beautiful grey/green leaves with continuous flowering blue spikes. Cut back if flowering stops
• Susanna Mitchell – Anthemis Hybrid…delicate foliage with daisy flowers that close at night
• Lavender Provence, Hidcote (sometimes these just die over winter – not super hardy)
• All sedums – many, many varieties
• Daylillies Stella d’Oro daylilies (yellow), planted with lavender, lamium, and purple/white violas
• Nicotiana – several varieties/varying heights – white flowers

Annual Vines

• Mandevillas – these come in climbing vines (pink, white or red) or red bush varieties. Super bloomer
• “Candy corn” vine available from Hillbilly Acres nurseries…underplant with yellow lantana and alyssum
• Thunbergia (yellow flower) …underplant with alyssum, brachyscon, zinnias
• Morning Glories – I plant them everywhere – bloom in morning late summer and fall. Best bloomer by far is variety “Heavenly Blue”.  Can be invasive at ground level.
• Passion Flowers – totally beautiful flower, climbing vines in a variety of colors

Annuals  (Must buy every year)

• Arctotis Graadis – beautiful white flowers with silver leaves
• Verbena
• Hibiscus – these can be trimmed to be like trees or are in bush form. Continuous bloomer.  Tropical – bring indoors in winter…condition slowly to put outside again
• Zinnias – Always a winner all summer
• Double impatients – I am not a big fan of normal impatients but the double ones are fantastic, vibrant colors – a standard for me. Do better with partial shade but recover well after they are wilted.
• Bacopa – can be good bloomer all summer but may die off in heat spell/needs water
• Gaura Whirling Butterflies..G. Lindheimeri – Another standard planted with Euphorbia diamond frost
• Lantana –One of the best heat tolerant plants, variety of colors
• Allysum – totally heat tolerant and small white blooms all summer, low 2”
• Brachycon (Asteracea Brachyscome, lemon twist swan river daisy) – fine leaves and small yellow flowers, great for overflowing containers
• Double petunias – wave variety – these are the only plants that have survived in 5” deep hanging boxes
• Coleus – plant a mix of them in a container, don’t mix with other plants as they’ll take over
• Spearmint – great for mojitos
• Sunvitalia – very heat sensitive, cannot dry out
• Osteospermum – white with purple centers is my favorite
• Argyanthemum – prefer cooler weather so may die in hot spell
• Felicita – small blue flower (Felicia amelloides) good for underplanting

I guess the 20+ I have in my basement aren’t enough because I just ordered 20 more bulbs for this year 🙂

They are taking up a considerable dedicated space these days around a crabapple tree and have also expanded to be along the periphery of another sun bed.  It took me a few weekends to dig up all the pachysandra to create this space.  A secret to getting rid of pachysandra is to post and have others dig it up.  Garden centers charge dollars for one stem when they can lift mine in huge sheets for free!  Everyone is happy.

I surround them with other things so the space looks natural – here is a picture when they are just about a foot high- they are hard to see in front of all the daylillies.  After seeing a beautiful massive grouping of daylillies when walking Lake Superior in Duluth, MN, I realized how beautiful it is if you can group them.  This tells you how late in the summer they are ready – the phlox is tall in this picture and the daylillies are already blooming too.

Is it time to plant? (courtesy of Swan Island Dahlias)

I haven’t split mine very much yet because they have been growing a few years getting bigger but note that each “tuber” is not a plant.  They need to have an “eye”, which are hard to find.  My strategy will be to just hack one in two when I am ready.  Any plant that requires too much delicate handling is just not for me!

I throw them in the ground around mid/late April with a small stake to note where they are and put them about a foot apart.  Is it worth trying to plant them earlier in pots?  NO.  I tried it vs. just putting them in the ground and didn’t see a huge difference and it was a lot more work.  Just throw them in the ground – don’t water them in!  Throw some slug bait down and give them a few weeks to come up.  Once you start seeing a few sets of leaves, pinch them back – even if they have a bud on them!  This will give you a bushier plant.

Staking

They take your breath away.  They require patience as once planted, you won’t see a flower for a few months.  But when they flower, wow!!!  And then you realize you need to stake because they grow so fast.  Last year, I started/made little cages out of garden fencing and used those in place of staking which was less work.  I need another year of this to decide the right mix.  You can see below a cage vs. my typical staking on the right.  Note that one plant needs several stakes because some get so big and wide….Stakes become a huge mess and some plants needed 4-5.

Although the caging method looks funny for a while, they soon disappear as you can see below and contain some pretty big plants.

I’m growing into getting bigger ones every year… here are a few of my new ones

The dahlia is also a mystery….who knows what you will find in one!  Spiders, FROGS!….. I cut mine and leave them outside for a few hours so the creatures inhabiting them may leave.  These are a few I cut so my husband could take them and give them to all his work wives.  He walks proudly into his office with several bouquets in hand taking care of those who take care of him.

Container Gardening 2019

Normally I do a container gardening class at the local library, which is, of course, not possible this year with the Corona Virus so I am posting my presentation here.  I also have this handout which also has a few of my favorite perennials (plants that live outside year after year) and good books and other resources:

Plant List Handout for Container Class

The cover picture is from my old roof deck and this is a passion flower, which is an annual out here in the northeast.

“Success has been defined as the ability to go from failure to failure with equal enthusiasm.”  – Unknown with some attributions to Lincoln or Churchill

The first year I did container gardening on my Boston roofdeck, I carried four 30 gallon leaf bags full of dirt down five flights of stairs in the fall. I didn’t know I could reuse “dirt” year after year by adding a little cow manure and compost to freshen the pots.  And potting/container mix is not the same as garden soil, which is much heavier and has a different composition.  My preference is for Coast of Maine products but definitely beware of Kellogg organic plus found at Lowes and Home Depot which almost killed all my plants.

I would find a pretty flower and put short phlox, or delphinium, or bleeding hearts or bachelor buttons in a container in the spring not realizing the flowers would soon go away and then add nothing to the small space requiring plants with maximum impact.  Read the labels for flowering season, zone and if for sun or shade.

After buying some new containers, plants I knew would do well, and new soil, I planted them and almost killed them because I didn’t moisten the soil and it takes an awful lot of water to wet dry soil.  Spend a few minutes with the hose and then stick your finger in the soil to see how moist it is.  Now I water the soil as I put it in the pots to ensure it is moist all the way through.

My second year, I wanted more and more so I realized I needed to buy containers at least 14″ wide and deep.  What I hadn’t learned yet was that when you have large containers, you need larger plants and that low growing sedum would just look silly in a 20″ round pot.  My favorites for height in containers is mandevilla, salvia, dahlias, geraniums, zinnias, elephant ears or caladiums, heliopsis lorraine, lavender, daylilies, and shrub roses.

I also realized that any space needs a variation in height so I experimented with vines and found little trellises that go in the back of a container to help morning glories grow up to the top of the deck rail or mandevilla vines or thunbergia.

Note:  My goals is to start doing a series on gardening.  This is a draft of my first attempt.  Be kind.  Be patient and this will get better 🙂