Help with planting flowers at a gravesite?
Friday, October 30th, 2009 at
12:08 am
I want to plant flowers at my fiance’s gravesite. It is a private, family cemetery so there are no restrictions on what I can plant, but I want something that looks pretty and will come up every year. I live in Ohio – I don’t know what planting zone that is in. Are there any types of flowers that I can plant this late in the year? I want to plant a mini rose bush but don’t know if it’s too late in the year. I would need something that can tolerate full sun and doesn’t need watering every day.
Filed under: Planting
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
I’m sorry for your loss. Hugs.
The first thing that comes to mind for me are peonies… gorgeous flowers every spring with reallly no care, though mowing can be an issue, as people have a tendency to mow them down early in the spring. However, you can expect a peony to come up and bloom faithfully every year for 50-100 years or more. And they’ll take whatever Ohio weather dishes out. Water for the first year or so if you get an extended drought, if you can; otherwise don’t worry about watering.
If you’re going for roses, look for the very hardy, disease resistant roses like the "flower carpet" series of groundcover roses or one of the Rugosas or one of the "Explorer" series of
roses from Canada or one of Griff Buck’s roses, bred for the
upper midwest. I would expect a shorter lifespan for a rose than a peony.
More:
peonies:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1241.html
http://www.hort.wisc.edu/mastergardener/Features/flowers/peony/peonies-ns.htm
http://www.peonies.org/cgi-bin/galleryA.cgi
some rose possibilities:
http://www.canadianrosesociety.org/hardyroses/crs_hardy.html
http://www.houstonrose.org/gbintrod.htm (don’t be put off by the fact this is from Houston — Griff bred for midwestern winters, and if the seedlings didn’t make it through winter unprotected, they just weren’t in his breeding program)
http://www.ag.iastate.edu/centers/cad/rose1.html
http://www.flowercarpet.com/
http://www.rosemagazine.com/articles04/rugosa_roses/http://www.heirloomroses.com/cgi/browse.cgi?page=cat&cat=Rugosa+Roses
Talk to your local extension service about planting now… if I were sure I could get a freshly dug specimen, I’d try either peonies or roses, but I would have been happier planting the peonies a couple of weeks ago. The time to plant peonies is in late August to early September in the upper midwest; roses also transplant well in the fall, but I always worry about rose specimens that have been sitting around in a pot all summer. If you’ve got a local nursery who can dig one for you now, I’d go for it.
plant something that will withstand the elements drought resistant begonia work well but since u r in ohio i would try some kind of flowering bush other than roses because they require so much attetion. If you do want roses the I woould try a dream rose they are very resistant to desiese and require little attetion. Although you can plant these flowers for your loved one I’m sure that your kind heart and keeping your loved one in your thoughs are all the flowers that they need. Best wishes.
Crocus bulbs are the first to come up. They come in yellow, white, and purples. They only get as tall as the grass, but the flowers are great. Other bulbs are daffodils, and tulips. When they are finished blooming the rose will start.
Plant the rose first, then fill in with the bulbs. You can plant all of these things now.