Dear lola-lemon, diane_nj and jaxondel! Thank you so much for your feedback and help! I appreciate it so much! LOLA: Thank you for the compliment about my Pergola :-) I too see lots of potential in it :-) and am eager to put it to good use! Thank you for recommending helpmefind.com this is a really cool website and I found such beautiful flowers on it! "pierre de ronsard" sounds so pretty already! It still is one of my top favourites! Now I am trying to find out if there is a way I would be able to maybe bring the roses indoor over the winter...at least the first few... I don't know yet. Maybe if I lean trellises up the sides leading to the pergola roof and then take the containers with trellis and roses indoor. For the Clematis I am lucky because I have another additional roof from which I can see the top of the pergola so it might even ass some extra beauty to have Clematis bloom on the top? I have, and am still considering wisteria, thank you! I have just read so many things of them being such an "aggressive" grower and it made me a little shy away from them! I do love the amethyst one and have read that I could grow these in containers! I wouldn't want to do any harm to a plant so if growing roses which I fell SO IN LOVE WITH would be too risky, Wisteria definitely would be my go to choice! With some lavender close by in other containers :-) DIANE: thank you so much for the great resource! I have been browsing the Manhattan Rose Society and am thrilled!! I heard of covering the containers and bottom of the roses with blankets and such over the winter, do you think that would be sufficient? For the size of containers I could have any size built I would need! I will get in touch with people at the society certainly someone will know! JAXONDEL: That's a thought I didn't even consider until now! Thank you for making me aware! the picture shows the view on to the top of the Pergola from the higher roof level:

Two clones means that they need to have originated from two separate seeds, and therefore they are genetically distinct. A lot of varieties are passed around for years by rooting cuttings. It might not even be obvious that two plants coming from different companies/nurseries are in fact the same clone--you have to be careful. For some species I understand there are actually a very small number of clones in general ciruculation. I think I heard this is the case for coccinea and vitifolia, for example. Each passion flower has both male and female organs, so that's not a concern, although there may be instances of clones that do not produce viable pollen or fruit. This is common for hybrids--I'm not sure about species. As far as how this works, I don't know the details, but i assume it is somewhat analogous to an immunological response in animals, whereby self vs. non-self is recognized. If the pollen is from the same clone, the plant must have mechanisms that recognize this and prevent pollination. I don't know offhand what those are. So if you need two to make fruit, once you have the appropriate plants, you need to have the correct pollinator, which can be a bee, bird, bat, etc. To be honest, I don't have a clue how this works for each individual species--perhaps someone here knows for the ones you mention. I do seem to recall that for the bee pollinated ones, often the bigger the bee the better (e.g. Carpenter bees)--they are more likely to brush up against the reproductive organs. Sometimes the situation can be very specific. For example, the rare and possibly extinct P. parritae is thought to have gone through a big drop in population when its only pollinator (a hummingbird) moved to higher altitude due to the effect of global warming. In California we have non-native Argentine ants. They are also extremely common. I've been told that some of the Tacsonias in Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco are pollinated by ants as you suggest (their normal pollinators are generally humingbirds, I think larger than our species). If you need to cross pollinate to get fruit, there should be no difference (perhaps tiny?) no matter the source of the pollen. Of course if you want to grow new plants from seed, this does become important. I believe P. coccinea (miniata) x vitifolia and P. quadrangularis x alata hybrids are very common.

Very nice!! I have a container garden in Manhattan, so similar situation to you, but only difference is my patio is shade/part shade, so my choice of plants is very different from yours. Japanese Maples and Hydrangea do well in my yard, as do the proverbial ferns and hostas. But no real flowering plants. But it's OK, as in a way, I've come to prefer a simple green color scheme. There's something very serene about it.

I'm confused by the use of the word 'exploit'. The standard solution is a roll-away dumpster. The product you linked is an expensive, industrial sized trash compactor. You could probably have a field of roll-aways for what it would cost to rent.