out of control false indigo

pdxmouse

Can I vent for a minute first? I just want to go back in time and kick the ass of whoever did the landscaping in my yard. Hard. They planted everything a leeeetle too close together, too close to the house, too close to the fence. So the apple tree is never happy and scrapes the roof, the butterfly bush that I hate anyway is cramped by the fence and tries to grow sideways, the quince fights with the flowering currant, they stuck a hybrid tea less than a foot from a rambling rose, etc. I feel like half my gardening projects are referee matches.

So this round is false indigo: 

 

vs fence (not quite that pretty, but still that rickety): 

 

The false indigo gets about 5 ft tall and 4 ft around. It's pretty enough, I guess. But whoever planted it, planted it 6 inches from the rickety fence. Halfway through summer, it knocks it over. From what I've read it doesn't sound like false indigo likes being transplanted or divided, plus I have no idea how big the rootball is but I'm guessing it's a nightmare.

Any thoughts? The first shoots are just starting to poke their heads up.

dirtyred

I feel for you.  Amateur gardeners only look at the plant's current size, not it's mature size, and everything gets put too close to something.  I have this fight with my husband all the time, and I end up having to move things around a lot after a couple of years.

~NB~

Yep, it's a very common problem.

And there's enough blame to go 'round: If I leave the appropiate spacing for plants, the customer is unhappy because the plants are small and all they see is empty space. Sometimes they insist on crowding and ask their landscaper to do it. I can explain how it will look in 3 years, and I can draw it out for them, but 3 weeks later I can drive by the house and they have planted extra plants between the plants. It's a pet peeve of mine.

pdxmouse

~NB~:

Yep, it's a very common problem.

And there's enough blame to go 'round: If I leave the appropiate spacing for plants, the customer is unhappy because the plants are small and all they see is empty space. Sometimes they insist on crowding and ask their landscaper to do it. I can explain how it will look in 3 years, and I can draw it out for them, but 3 weeks later I can drive by the house and they have planted extra plants between the plants. It's a pet peeve of mine.

Have these people never heard of annuals?! 

My mom got me a garden design book for the NW climate that designs the plans to look good as they fill in. They give suggestions for annuals for the gaps in the first few years. And it has almost no rhodies. I kinda want to make out with it. 

No advice on the false indigo? I might just selectively cut down a few sprouts as they come up, before it gets real bushy. For all that it was named "perennial of the year" I can't find much info on taming a mature one.

~NB~

Dig up what you don't want and offer it on Craigslist. I actually love Baptisia. It's is an important plant for pollinators, and it's tough and well-adapted. It's a native plant as well. I think of it as a problem solver for tough areas.

http://www.plantdelights.com/Baptisia-Redneck-Lupines/products/495/

 

pdxmouse

Well I went out there today... and saw the last of the marks from when I called the "before you dig" hotline. So somewhere very close by are our gas and electrical lines. I don't think I'm going to be digging out a big taproot in that area any time soon.

Well, at some point Betty Baptista had babies. The crown by itself seems like maybe 4 plants and takes up at least 5 ft. (It's behind a fence, behind the mailbox, pushed right up against the flowering currant... I don't go back there much.) 

So, I snapped off anything that was too close to the fence or pointing toward it. I guess I'll just do some hard pruning and see how it looks this year. I'm sure I'll get a second chance next year if this looks weird by the end of the season.