Daylilies and Coneflower

Four years ago we moved into our current house.  To my chagrin, this move included a transfer of my husband's favorite plants...hosta, purple coneflower and daylilies from the old yard to our new one.  At our previous house I would estimate that over 80% of the landscape contained these three plants.

Photo courtesy of gallery32

I was compelled to break out of this limited palette and actually design a diverse landscape.  {Some background information...even though I'm the designer, my husband still feels he's in charge of plant selection, thus the narrow collection}.

I was so excited to design a diverse, sunny border along the front of my house and was already scheming plant choices, creating sketches, picking colors...then one day I arrived home to a long line of daylilies and coneflowers along our front walk.  Ugh, my heart sank.  Now, let me say, I do enjoy both daylilies and purple coneflowers, but when those are the few plants in your life how could I not yearn for more?

Photo courtesy of No.9 Images

It took two years to push my way into that monoculture border with an array of new sunny perennials.  The end of the second year I finally told my husband to get the last few daylilies and coneflowers out or I was going to start pulling (though I had already started in secret).  I did keep one special daylily in my border, but only one.

My husband still has a fascination with both these plants and you'll still find them all over our yard, but overall our garden is at least more diverse.  The hosta fetish?  Well, that is another story that I'll save for a future post.