I pretty much garden according to the 1/3, 2/3 rule that you cite, although I've never counted up the plants on both sides. LOL. My zone is so much colder that I don't know if I can give you enough specifics to be helpful for you. My garden goal has always been to get the absolute most out of my rather short growing season. I aim for a seven month garden starting about mid-March and going to mid-October (that probably seems pretty short to you in zone 8, but it is really stretching the season here). I also try to keep the long dreary winter months from being too stark as well, setting up a couple of spots of sedum, grasses, & evergreens that I can see from my windows during winter. I think I have accomplished my goal quite well, with a well-balanced garden that looks quite lovely through seven months and often beyond. Books that have been helpful to me include Ann Lovejoy's The American Mixed Border: Gardens for All Seasons (and many of her other books as well) and Pamela Harper's Designing with Perennials. Both of these author's are from warmer climates so you would be able to use a lot more of their plant selections in your garden design than I can. I rely heavily on the mixed shrub border approach. My season starts with as many bulbs as I can squeeze in (in specially created spaces) on my inhospitable soil (very dense wet clay) and a nice variety of spring blooming shrubs. I also use a small variety of spring &/or woodland ephemerals, such as Virginia Bluebells & Bleeding Hearts. The main spring perennial that I use with bulbs is Sweet Kate Tradescantia (spiderwort) for its chartreuse color. These are followed by a few bearded Iris and lots of Siberian Iris (long lasting spiky foliage) and Lady's Mantle (wonderful spring chartreuse flowers and interesting all season foliage). I also have a small raised gravel garden with spring alpine and various small trailing plants and a small woodland type garden with May Apples, trilliums, gingers, foam flowers, shooting stars, lots of minor bulbs, and columbines, which are later overtaken by large hostas. Evergreen shrubs are quite limited here in zone 5 compared to what you have available to you in zone 8, but I use what I can of them in my small yard, varying colors from dark & light greens, mixing shiny and dull textures, and addding spots of golds & blues. I also fill in with shrub size perennial grasses which stay up through the winter. I also try to use only shrubs that have multiple seasons of interest (one exception is Miss Kim Lilac). I'm talking about shrubs that have spring blooms and good fall color or berries, such as viburnums & aronias. I also use quite a few summer blooming shrubs as well, such as Itea (glorious long-lasting fall color) and Clethra (sweet flowers and likes wet soil), as well as Cotinus and Physocarpus with all-season lovely colored foliage. I garden on a rather small scale, a small suburban lot with more house than yard, but I use all sorts of perennials (my Excel chart lists around 275 individual types of plants, not counting 125 daylilies, 25 clematis & 50 hosta). Most are in the bays between shrubs and around and in front of them as well, along with two beds that are primarly perennial, with just a shrub or two. With this many plants in such a small amount of space, you can imagine that my garden is very heavily layered and that I depend on spring ephemerals to fade away to make room for bulging summer plants & that I cut back many perennials and shrubs quickly and heavily to show off the plants that are just coming on. I rely heavily on plants with a long season such as coreopsis, sedums, catmints & grasses and have a long list of late blooming plants (see my recent postings to the strings on fall plants for some of them). I still have rebloom on some phloxes (5 varieties, all blooming at slightly different times), catmints, sedums, some clematis & a couple of daylilies, along with one helianthus (First Light) which has not yet bloomed. Sweet Caroline Hibiscus moscheutos is still in bloom (started in August) and most of my grasses are in bloom with the exception of Miscanthus sinensis Strictus, which sometimes doesn't make it to bloom before hard frost, but is colorful enough by itself, as is the tiny Sedum sieboldii (October Daphne) which seldom blooms for me either (only in long warm falls). In summer the garden is mostly full of daylilies of every color size and shape. My daughter says it looks like Disneyland then. A wee bit overdone, I think, but I love it. The late bloomers take over next, accompanied by things that never quit like Rozanne geranium and Knockout Roses. I cheat a bit too on the daylilies that start looking shabby late in the season, by planting a big, always good looking, Baptisia in the center front of the main daylily bed. That, with a couple nice container plants and two large Sweet Autumn Clems in their full glory along the nearby fence, blinds you to any garden messes. P.S. If you are interested in pictures, please check my postings &/or homepage. Best of luck to you. Leslie

hey newt all plants have an annual growth rate ... see the link for an intro ... all height estimates are at 10 years ... it will continue to grow.. at the annual growth rate for the rest of your life.. and her life ... so twice as big in 20 years.. three times in 30 .... etc ... no conifers really stop growing ... though in 100 years they might slow down ... also .. at the link ... use the data base to hopefully find specific info on the plant you are interested in ... do keep in mind.. that plantings are made.. to hide the foundation.. not to plant plants ON THE FOUNDATION ... I CANT THINK OF A SINGLE CONIFER.. I WOULD PUT CLOSER THAN 5 TO 10 FEET FROM THE FOUNDATION.... a pic might help delineate the circumstances.. and lead to further suggestions... good luck ken Here is a link that might be useful: link

I have already done my own searching for this wisteria. Yes, there are plenty of nursreries that sell them in a small one gallon or quart size container and I have called a number of them to see if they have a larger size. They don't; I found one place that has only 2 and I need a total of 4. This is why I came on hear just to ask if anyone else knows if there is a place that They know of that sells them around 4' tall; not so I can be told to just do my own research since that is what I have been doing. So if someone knows and can actually be of help, then please do answer this posting. Thank you.

Yes, that is cheap. I am not sure how much you use, how often, whether it is quick or slow release, etc; and you have to be careful with numbers like 4-5-3 when comparing products. The fertilizer numbers can be used to calculate how much of a fertilizer needs to be applied to equal 1 pound of the nutrient you are trying to add to the soil. So if the numbers on the fertilizer are 10-5-5, you can divide 100 by 10 and this will tell you that you need 10 pounds of the fertilizer to add 1 pound of the nutrient (nitrogen) to the soil. If the product is 20-20-20, you only need 5 lbs of the product --- thus, while the 20-20-20 might cost more than the 10-5-5 brand, the actual expense based on application might be less! For example, another excellent product that may seem expensive by comparison is Intrepid Blue Ribbon Biodynamic Fertilizer which is 6-6-7, but is around $18.95 for a 5 lb container. However, you only use 1 tablespoon per plant, it is organic and it also contains strains of soil microorganisms. One "tub" of this has lasted me all season and my garden plants look good. Remember, you only use one tablespoon per plant per application! I use it at transplanting, flowering, and heavy fruiting periods. I also take soil sample with a test kit to see what the plant needs. Here is a link that might be useful: Intredid Blue Ribbon Biodynamic Fertilizer