Wow! Bill Maryott has some great daylilies. My problem is that I pretty much only like the ones that are either out of stock or over $50 apiece. And since I usually buy daylilies (much less fancy, mind you) for $1 or $2 per plant from Gilbert Wild when they are on sale, I need a bit of time to adjust to Bill's prices. I'll probably get there... just might take a season or two.
I have dianthus Firewitch and Rose de Mai planted with pink roses, too. It seems that most of my pink roses are a warmer shade of pink than the dianthus, so there is a lack of parallelism there that makes me wish I had chosen some roses in cooler pink. Sexy Rexy, City of Leeds, Hobby, and Kimono are in that area. There are a few purple roses in the mix, too that help pull the mixture together. Falstaff, for example, finally took off this year and grew into a big plant. Parfait and Permanent wave have a punchy raspberry color that works really nicely with dianthus. And there are some iris nearby in blue and/or purplish shades that help pull things together both in and out of bloom.
Meanwhile, the bed that houses Mardi Gras has three Sunsprite(Freesia), two Liebeszauber, two Graham Thomas, a Gingersnap (slated to move two more there) Oranges and Lemons, Cary Grant, and Day Breaker. Ascot is associated with that bed, but it's a bit too blue for it. My guess is that it will be replaced, possibly by Scarlet Knight. Cardinal Hume is also associated with the bed and seems to work well enough. There are some yellow daylilies in the bed that I planted just this summer, and they are doing well. In another conversation, Toni had suggested salvia for this bed, and I'm thinking
this one which does very well in my garden in other locations, and looks smashing with yellow flowers.
The good news about Prescott is that the high temperature here through much of summer rarely exceeds 95F. We can go for a week or two at a time in July or August and not even see 90F. Furthermore, I planted these dahlias in a seasonal creek bed. Light rains in July and August would have suited them well. I did not anticipate 6" of rain in July. Sadly, this was more moisture than the dahlias planted in the low part of the garden could take and many died. Still, there are quite a few blooming right now.
In May and June I'm out there with a watering hose about five days per week. If we get good monsoon rains in a week, I water when the ground dries out.
It's funny, Toni, I almost cannot grow agastache here. It almost never over-winters. And it grows very slowly. There's one Korean mint hyssop growing in the shade of a maple that is in its fourth year. It dies to the ground in winter and re-emerges to grow six feet tall each year. I have trouble with caryopteris, too (blue beard, I believe). There is a spot where my Yellow/Red/Orange bed blends into my Pink/Crimson bed that will be punctuated with a caryopteris, if I can get one to survive there. The last one I planted up-and-died last week.
