Eight years ago I moved from the lush USDA growing zones 9-10 of the San Francisco Bay Area to the colder and more arid Zone 6 of Boise, ID. At 2500 feet above sea level, we routinely have a few 0 F degrees days during the winter and our fair share of 100 F degree days in the summer. I'd always had beautiful gardens in the temperate and forgiving weather of California but as far as gardening goes, moving to Boise was like moving to another planet. I had never worked in the much harsher and more variable Zone 6 conditions and was completely clueless. Forsythia, peonies, and lilacs were familiar but that was about the extent of my knowledge.
During my first year, I haunted the garden centers and nurseries to get acquainted with what could grow here. I am a hands on person, so I needed to go see what the stores were carrying. I read all the tags to see what the plants were supposed to do, what conditions they liked, and how big they would get. Then I'd go home and read whatever I could find about those plants. I also managed to get my name on the lists of many a mail-order gardening catalog, and pored over them all winter long, reading every single entry.
In this new place I called home, other than the 12 aspens, the curbed flower beds of my yard contained only a handful of barberry bushes and a solid 3 inch layer of lava rock (yuck!). Absolutely nothing else, and the grass in the lawns was just barely alive. Talk about bleak!
Despite my past experience in planting annuals in California, here in Boise I instinctively I knew that I first had to plant perennials as my foundational building blocks. But where to start and with what? I was desperate for some instant color: my very first entry in my garden journal said "I'm hoping to create an intimate back yard with lots of visual variety and wonderful splashes of color." Interestingly, the first 3 perennial varieties that I purchased turned into beloved mainstays of my garden.
My first purchase was at the grocery store and was a 6-pack of annual pink dianthus which happily have turned out to be perennials. That simple purchase was the beginning of a continuing love affair with dianthus. That 6-pack has now evolved into a dianthus border almost 30 feet long -- in shades of deep pink, pale pink, white, and deep magenta. I discovered that if you deadhead them, they will bloom for a longer period. This year I found an "intensely fragrant" variety in the Bluestone Perennials catalog and, of course, had to have some. The first of these new variety have just started to bloom in my yard, and, wow, the fragrance is heavenly.
On impulse that first year (most of that year was impulse buying), I was drawn in by a Multi Blue clematis and planted it against my very dreary and blank east facing fence. It was so lovely I had to have more: I next succumbed to a deep purple Warsaw Nike and two Sugar Candy clematis whose blossoms are pink and white and 9 inches across. While I've neglected them at times, accidentally cut them off at the base with a weed eater, they still manage to come back year after year, bigger and fuller than ever. They now intertwine with the roses provide some of the showiest spring displays in the garden.
The third discovery that first summer was perennial salvias, East Friesland and May Night The first ones I bought I stuck in a bed out front that is bordered by railroad ties and they are still there. Planted in groupings their intense blue colors are truly show stoppers. I've had small children in the neighborhood and strangers walking by stop to tell me how pretty that flower bed is. No, they don't bloom nonstop through the summer, but if you cut them back after the first blooms fade, you will get a second round of blooms that is just as spectacular as the first one.
Now, 8 years later, I research plants I'm thinking about acquiring and plan very carefully. But the garden divas must have been guiding my way that first year because they started me on a path that has been a remarkable journey.
