I'm new here and just wanted to stop in and introduce myself.

I live in the Rochester, NY area (zone 6) and I'm a very unskilled but willing to learn gardener.

We bought our home about 12 years ago and there were several plants already well established: 10-12 rose bushes, a rose of sharon, a couple forsythia, a beautiful old maple tree in the backyard, some kind of variegated green plant that I don't know, a beautiful white peony, several lilacs, hmmm... that's all I can think of off the top of my head. I haven't killed the roses or the lilacs yet, so I guess I'm doing ok.

My main reason for searching for a group is a problem that's been bothering my variegated green whatever-it-is on the east side of my house. It's kind of like a tall ground cover (about 6" high), and it gets these stalky flowers that shoot up above it another 6" or so that look a lot like a queen anne's lace. It's a 1'x12' border along my house, and probably only gets about 3 hours of direct sun in the early afternoon 'cuz the neighbors house is only about 8' away. There were 3 or 4 hostas mixed in with this plant but they're pretty much gone... killed off (I think) from the same thing that's now affecting this plant. Let me tell you what happens... The plants sprout up in the spring looking fine, but early to midsummer they start getting these brown patches. It seems to start in the same location every year and spreads out from there. Right now to look at it, 1/2 of the plant looks dead, and mixed right in with it is what looks like healthy green leaves. What the heck is going on?

Thanks for any advice you can give. If you have any questions I'll answer the best I can.

Wings

Let's see if this link works.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/faerywings44/detail?.dir=9bc0&.dnm=2109re2.jpg&.src=ph

Oops... it was on my yahoo page which was private. Try it again and see if it's working now.

Thanks

Oh thank you so much. I've wanted to take that out and plant something else there anyway, but was afraid there was some kind of disease in the soil. As long as I plant something that likes the sun it should be fine.