Almostgotit.com

Nursery plants make terrific birthday presents, but generally speaking, gardening Almostgotit-style is cheap as dirt. 

For example.  My exclusive gardening buckets are recycled kitty litter and laundry detergent tubs.  My herbicide (under the mulch) is a layer of newspapers.  My  exotic fertilizer is home-made compost, ashes from our woodstove, plus a little leftover perlite from my hupertufa experiments.  And most of my plants are gifts, trades, or divisions from elsewhere in my yard. 

I’m a little bit “organic,”  but mostly I’m just a tightwad.

Also, everything I plant must thrive on neglect.  I don’t really water, fertilize, or prune things.

Here are the plants that have survived my abuse so that I could re-use them in this bed:

Bi-color Dianthus
Sun, mostly evergreen
Cold hardiness zone: 4 to 9
6 to tall 12 inches wide
I bought these years ago as little annuals, with no idea they were perennials.  They bloom sporadically from spring – fall, and are easy to divide.

Creeping Phlox
evergreen
zones 3-9
6″ in height and spread out 2′.
I bought these to spill over my rock walls.  They bloom like crazy every spring, and look great all year long.  BULLET-PROOF.  Also pretty easy to divide.

Sedum: “Matrona”
Part shade to sun
Cold hardy zones: 3-9.
Mature size: Height 24 inches, Width: 12-24 inches (30-60 cm).
Flowering period: August to September.  Pink flowers turn bronze and last all winter.
I pulled a small Matrona (looks just like the more common “Autumn Joy” sedum) out of a mixed pot someone gave me and have been dividing it, replanting it, giving it away, etc., ever since.  Four-season interest, fast-growing without being a pest: what’s not to love about Sedum Matrona?

Sedum Sarmentosum: aka ‘Trailing Stonecrop” aka “Star Sedum” aka “Graveyard Moss”
Part shade to sun
Cold hardiness zones: 4 to 8
Covered with yellow flowers in the spring
I found a tiny piece of this in my backyard and have been using it all over the place.  This will grow about anywhere a piece of it falls, drapes beautifully from planters, and can be a tiny bit pesty if you want to get rid of it.  Makes a great ground cover over one of my rotting stumps, however, rendering the thing almost elegant.  Why pay for stump removal when there’s Star Sedum?

Yellow Iris
Sun
A friend asked me to “babysit” her collection of irises in my garden during a protracted moving process, and I just stuck the corms wherever I could fit them in.  The irises spread, my friend took some back (she’s welcome to take more!), and what was left in this particular flower bed was a shorter yellow variety that just happened to be perfect. 

Ruellia brittoniana: “Mexican Petunia”
Tender evergreen perennial
Sun
Hardiness zones 8-10. Marginally hardy in Zone 7 if protected and mulched. Can be invasive in very warm climates.
3 feet tall
Stems are very easy to root in moist soil. Over time the plant multiplies and the original stem becomes a colony.
These are wacky and fun.   Purple flowers look just like petunias on long stems.   I snagged them — as just a bunch of sticks last April — for free in a neighborhood plant trade, and am holding them in my whiskey barrel garden until I see them thru a second season.  They would be perfect with the yellows and pinks in this bed, though, and next spring I’ll try them.  In case they don’t winter over in my zone 6-7 yard,  I’ll save some cuttings as well.