AUTUMN CATALOGUE

No, T&M have put a lot of us off, Clarice. Their quality of plants is poor and now I am beginning to wonder about their seeds, too, after four poorly germinating packets of seeds! I think you should be OK with Parkers. Their bulbs are always good and I have heard other people say that their plants are fine, too. Next year, when your V.bonariensis will be strong plants, I hope, take some cuttings - they root very easily!

Verbena are a great choice Clarice, and so are Echinacea.
Good luck with the order, and let us know how you get on with them once they are established.

I have bought plants from Parkers in the past, they are fairly good. As Spritzhenry suggested take cuttings they root very easily, I break off the top part of the stem and push them into the soil and they root easily.

Thanks i'll have a go at that next year.

I snip off some of the non-flowering shoots near the bottom of the plant, pull off the next pair of leaves and cut under where they were, take off one more pair of leaves and place the cuttings round a pot of gritty compost with a plastic bag over the top held away from the cuttings with little sticks. They root within a few weeks and then I pot them up individually. They get planted out in the spring. I actually managed to get some seeds to germinate this year, so I planted out 6 new plants this week! I was very pleased, as I'd tried before with seeds, but no luck.

Nice choice Clarice. They are both plants that I am growing from seed. A lot of the seeds were free, either collected from my sisters garden or free with magazines etc. So I will have to wait for the flowers but the plants look good. By the way the snails in my garden were rather fond of Echinacea leaves I discovered.

It's exciting ordering things isn't it Clarice. I tend to have lots of blue/ mauve in my garden aswell because those are the colours I like best.

I planted two Verbena bonariensis last year, one in the front garden, one in the back, but this year they have both totally disappeared. I've just read on the internet that these plants should be mulched in the winter, so do you think that's the likely reason I've lost mine? Are they not very hardy?

Now that does surprise me! Mine are hardy here in Somerset - do you get heavy frosts? If you get any more, why not take cuttings and over-winter them to be sure to keep some for the next year.

No, hardly any frosts. In fact planted quite near to Penstemons which I thought I might lose over winter.
Penstemons survived, Verbena bonariensis didn't. Would they have been attacked by anything? Such as my neighbour's huge snail community?

Mine don't get touched by snails, surprisingly enough. I just have no explanation as to why yours disappeared! Try again - they also grow from seed - and take cuttings just in case.