What to plant on Quebec friend's grave?
April 15, 2009 6:28 PM   Subscribe

Can you suggest plants for a friend's grave in Montreal Quebec? Zone 5a, full sun, low maintainence. My google-fu suggests sedum, although I havn't found a local garden center who stock it. Help? Merci.
posted by tingting to Home & Garden (6 answers total)
 
Best answer: Moss phlox! Unlike some other varieties of phlox, it likes full sun.
posted by HopperFan at 6:35 PM on April 15, 2009


Best answer: The Richters catalogue has sedum seeds.

Do you want to simply do a low blanket over the whole thing? Mount Royal cemetery uses some kind of low-growing flowering thyme, I think. Smells nice, flowers unobtrusively, never gets tall enough to be noticeable.

Lavender would grow taller but also smell pleasant. There are lavender cultivars hardy in our climate.

If you want something more like shrubs, there's always lilac.

You could simply plant some annuals in mid to late May and expect to renew them yearly. The usual ones – marigold, petunias, geraniums of various kinds – look nice and last most of the summer.

I tried planting roses – particularly hardy varieties, too – on my parents' grave in Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, but they did not survive. Unless you plan to pass by often to water and care for them, don't do roses.
posted by zadcat at 7:12 PM on April 15, 2009


How French is your friend? In French culture, chrysanthemums are de rigeur for funerals.
posted by christhelongtimelurker at 9:18 PM on April 15, 2009


A note on roses: I've had a lot of success in Ottawa with hardier varieties, in particular the Morden roses (see the parkland roses at bottom of the linked page). They are a zone 2 plant used to dry prairie conditions--they thrive in zone 4/5. They have a much more open, looser flower than a tea rose though and, like any rose, can get scraggly if not pruned, but they're hardy as anything. They don't need any special care in the winter, for example.
posted by bonehead at 8:10 AM on April 16, 2009


Geraniums are always nice. Sedum is great if you do find it...they seem to thrive by themselves.
posted by Taurid at 9:12 PM on April 16, 2009


platycodon grows very well in Quebec - and is quite pretty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_bellflower
posted by jambina at 10:43 PM on April 18, 2009


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