8734 orange daylilies and Hydrangea

Nice combo Lori!

This is lovely! As Karen said, nice combination.

Thanks Ladies! This is part of an experiment. I found two of the toughest plants I could find and planted them under a black walnut tree. these two seem able to survive the juglone. Some hostas are ok under a walnut too. They don't appear as vigorous as the other hydrangea and lilies planted about 15 ft away which are not in the drip zone of the tree. I think I'll move them out of there and let the ajuga have free rein.

Well done Lori! So you CAN grow some things under a Walnut after all!

Yes, it's true, Karen. I've found the black walnut a bit messy and when the nuts fall...a bit dangerous! The last two springs have been so cold that the nuts, last year, were small and very few.. this year they are the size of olives and they're dropping early. wondering if it's worth the headache, to be honest. I have two walnuts.. at least 40 ft. tall..maybe taller...and a sapling about 12 ft tall. The two trees on the south end of the house are too close to my sugar maples...and that's the one shading the beds with the hydrangeas and orange lilies. So if I decide to take them down, I need to find an artisan or cabinet maker who would use the wood.

Wow! Sounds amazing Lori, a really fab idea to have a carpenter or artisan to use the wood and most likely create something really special.
I can imagine the walnuts are tasty too.

Such a harmonious combo, colours as well as shapes go so well together. In spite of my dislike of anything orange, I do like this. I never managed to find anything that did well under my walnuts, nothing like a bit of experimenting eh..

Yes the walnuts are delicious, Kate. If you've googled them you've seen that they are a drupe..with the seed enclosed in a pulpy yellow gunk (no other word for it) which stains a terrible yellow/brown on anything it comes in contact with.. which can be: clothes, skin, face, hair... lol... You have to remove the mush and wash the nut cases which are deeply grooved and hold onto the husk. (in researching the trees I found a reference from an older person in the US who dropped the nuts on his driveway and drove over them to get rid of the husks and pulp!) My son put some of the nuts in a campfire to see if it would make the shells easier to pry apart... the nutmeats were a little steamy but delicious. Some of the gourmet restaurants have blackwalnut icecream!... I prefer Maple walnut. lol...

I've been experimenting, for sure, M. I saw a pic of a black walnut grove, on facebook. The owner had just planted a huge collection of hosta in their shade. My Bressingham Blue seems undeterred. She had seed pods last season and this spring there were at least a dozen of her progeny all round her. But with the crazy spring we had, she's not doing as well this season. I'm planning on lifting the daylilies and the hydrangea along with the BB and put them somewhere else.

Hi Lori, I did look up the plants you had mentioned previously growing wild and locally to you, plus the walnut.
It does sound like a difficult process avoiding any contact with skin etc. I wonder have you tried or are you thinking of trying the “ drive over and crush effect” 😀
Walnut ice cream sounds divine. I did google the black walnut, interesting too.

LOL..Kate. interesting that you should gravitate to the "drive over and crush effect"...because I was thinking that perhaps I could find some mesh bags..(like onion bags) and load them with the walnuts to contain the mess of the "drive over"...lol... besides having to wash the car, top and bottom, afterward, it might be a feasible alternative to brown spots all the way to my elbows and a brown face. :-)

Most of the plants I've listed are "prairie plants" ...and it's sad that most of the wild prairies that exists in middle North America are diminished and increasingly used for monocot mono-crop agriculture.