Sooooo..... Plant number one is officially planted, bought as a replacement for the many lantana I dug out of the front garden.
It is a medium purple trailing lantana (lantana montevidensis), and it SHOULD remain on the short side, less than 18-20 inches, which would be a great improvement over the 5 foot tall ones I uprooted in the fall. I like the plant because it is a constant bloomer and I like the color. Its downsides are that it can be invasive and the smell is not appealing to me. Regardless, it is in!
And as a side note, you see, I am not kidding about the amount of cement in the soil. That little pile is just from the hole I dug to place the lantana in. Its nuts.
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Hi Jess~~ Well it looks to me like your gardening season has officially commenced and with such a deserving addition. I've always loved Lantana and really don't mind the scent. I sure wish I could keep them alive over winter. I have to buy new ones each year which, I suppose is better than not having them at all.
ReplyDeleteHave I told you that I love your blog background? One of the nicest I've seen.
Thank you so much Grace - but really its the mind behind www.backgroundfairy.com, all I did was push a button and import it :). Charleston's bazillion lantana usually don't freeze, at least on the peninsula, which is about 5 degrees warmer than the rest of the city at night, so hopefully its in there to stay. If they could make a really nice smelling cultivar I swear it would be plant of the year!
ReplyDeleteYikes, that is a lot of cement. Our last house had that problem, I swear the builders cleaned out the cement mixer in our back yard for every house they built on the block! Your little Lantana looks lovely, it will look amazing by mid summer I'm sure. Ours used to grow like crazy!
ReplyDeleteYou need a jackhammer just to plant a flower. We have a rocky soil and I am always pulling up huge rocks.
ReplyDeleteI love the trailing lantana. I have the white trailing lantana and it is so hardy! I have heard of people mixing the white and purple together to intertwine. Congrats on your first planting!
I'm looking forward to seeing your lantana take off and become a mass of flowers Jess!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to plant one, for the butterflies as well as the flowers, but sadly lantana is another noxious weed here, as it just looooves the warm temperate conditions :( I think I've read that some sterile varieties have been developed that will stay put in the garden, so I must look into that. But if all else fails I can still enjoy looking at yours!
It is amazing to see you planting lantana, when we still have snow on the ground. Thanks for keeping my spirits up.
ReplyDeleteDeborah
My gardens have that same cement problem :( It's so irritating. Actually, I dig up all sorts of things...my house sits on a spot where an old farm was. The cement is from this house, but I also dig up old pieces of metal, dishes, utensils, glass (which freaks me out the most, I've almost cut myself a few times..) Glad you've got your first plant in :D All I have are spring bulbs, and violas from last fall.
ReplyDeleteGreat choice. Janie would tell you to go back and get the white. I would get many more of the lavender, but I took her advice and put in a white as well.
ReplyDeleteCurbstone, Amy & Kyna: Fortunately whomever decided they were too lazy to leave it there did jackhammer it up for me into bite sized pieces! Whats weird is that you don't get to it until about 4-5 inches down. Like the lazy guys just dumped some topsoil on top of it.
ReplyDeleteGippy: We have the same problem, but not quite so bad as you because some winters it freezes back to the ground...that said, the stuff out front had multiplied all over the front garden. I believe this one is sterile with no berries, but I guess we'll see.
Deborah - Sorry its still snowy there. :( It never really snows here, and our average temps (most years) for right now are 65 day and 50 night. The historic latest frost day is in a few days, and so the next coming weeks I'll be getting tons and tons of stuff in, stay tuned!
NellJean - I might have to get white too, it was a toss up in the nursery. I am just a little cautious until I see how this little one does and make sure he doesn't get really big and all over the place like can happen here. I also have planted him only in part sun, because my full sun area has 'bigger loves' already planned. So we have to see there too.
ReplyDeletePurple stuff! I can never remember the word lantana, so it's just purple stuff. Lovely and so midbogglingly tough.
ReplyDeleteChickenFreak - the tougher the better when I'm involved.
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