I think it's OK to amend the soil. You just need to blend it with the surrounding soil. What you don't want is effectively planting in a bucket of compost.

I always dig out a generous hole, then add the dirt that falls off when teasing the roots of the plant. Mix well, using the hole as a mixing bucket, and plant. I only ever add compost when there is a large rock or root that comes out of the ground to replace the missing volume.

OP, gardenias can be a little dramatic. Just keep it well-hydrated and I think it'll be fine. I think all mine did a similar thing when I planted them. Just ignore the tantrum and it'll be over with shortly.

Mine gets stripes and striations but I haven't had one yet that was split neatly in half like yours.

“What might cause …?”

ionizing radiation

I’m starting to think that PIP Eden is not a very stable sport. Mine is just getting big enough to start blooming quite nicely and it is giving me some interesting versions of both the original color of Eden, some dark pinks and some mixed blooms. Really weird.

My old house was a solid load-bearing masonry brick home, built 1906ish. The owner before me was in the construction business and had contracts with the city. Any time he had to tear up a portion of (brick paver) road and pave it, he'd bring the bricks home and built a patio with them in the back yard. When I purchased the house it was all covered in grassy weeds and you couldn't tell there was brick there at all. I slowly dug them up, built raised beds along the edge of the property (filled with roses, irises, and peonies), and laid a path with them through the side yard.

My current home is also brick, but it's a wood-frame home with brick veneer as most modern construction is. I do find chunks of brick buried in the yard and have no idea what to do with any of them. I just toss them in a bucket with the other small stones I find.

Do you like painted brick? I do. I like natural unpainted and painted brick. I wouldn't paint my brick house because eventually it would have to be repainted. But I have seen many painted brick homes around here that look fantastic. They're usually white or cream.

Nearby there's a huge old brick factory building about a city block long. It used to be cream color but last year they painted it stark white with black trim around the many windows. It looks great. Most of the buildings downtown ( I can walk to downtown) are brick, the middle school is brick and they just built a two or three story huge addition to it in brick. The Post Office is brick. The police station is rock mortared together. There are a fair amount of rock houses around here.

Where I live, bricks are used, but are non structural. Just cladding. They build office buildings with bricks with a weathered appearance. They bricks are new, but they look 100 years old. And then they add modern black shiny windows. So the building looks part new, part 100 years old. The houses have brick fronts and the other 3 sides are siding. Looks good when looking front on, but at an angle, it looks bad. All siding looks better IMO.

'At Last' was the closest I could ever find locally. All my roses tend to go pinker than promotional photos show (I even get pink on Julia Child!), so I do get a little bit of the lovely gradient that LEH and Lady of Shalott have. I got too impatient trying to find either LEH or LOS so had to settle for what was available. Not the greatest picture, sorry.

I’ve been debating getting Just Joey as a tree rose to balance my LEH tree rose in the other long, narrow bed edging my patio. BenT, your gorgeous one has just made my mind up for me!

Just Joey is certainly still impressive! And very fragrant from what I hear. LEH is one of my most wanted roses, but it has never worked out for me. DA sent me 3 across 2 years and none even made it to the next January. I see Lady of Shalott in a lot of pictures now...but to me it's quite different and lacks some of the LEH beauty. Sure seems more vigorous though!

Black soldier fly larvae, maybe? If so, they're not a problem (and probably actually are beneficial).

Lol luckyladyslipper! I agree!

Thanks SyinUSA. I'll look into that!

:)

Dee