I'm not in Virginia, but I am in Utah zone 6a and planted and grew Imperial Star Artichokes for the first time this year and am attempting to overwinter them. We already had our first light frost about a week ago and this did not phase my chokes, but in anticipation of a hard frost sure to come soon I prepared my chokes today for overwintering. This is what I did: Cut the foliage down to about 6 inches. Covered them with about six inches of compost, then put about one foot of straw over each plant. I have four. Fingers crossed that at least a few survive! Good Luck!!!

Its not red like Chrysler Imperial, Firefighter, Ingrid Bergman, Olympiad. Its more of a deep rich very dark pink/magenta with red undertones. When it is in full bloom in the spring.....its a showstopper, trust me! I have one thats really big and one that is young. Its a good grower, not a wimp. Thorny thing, so be warned. I really dont know why its not more touted. Give it room and a couple of years and it will be a star. Right now, in this Texas heat, I am not getting many blooms, just struggling to keep things watered but I plan to cut my big one back quite a bit in the fall and sock the fertilizer to it. A good rose that would look wonderful next to it and has a similar big growth habit is Quicksilver - that lovely lavender color would be a show off next to Tess. I have 2 of them - may have to get another and put next to Tess!

In my experience the cold treatment of the seedlings or even young plants never tricked them into fruiting (blooming) the first year. I've always had to wait til the second or third year to get 'chokes'. It works best to sow the seeds late in the summer after all the really hot weather has passed and pray for a cool fall. You have to baby the young plants through winter - either hoop them with frost cloth or use wall-o-water devices and then pray for a mild winter. They seem to handle temps down to the high twenties just fine but really cold nights can do them in. They do fine grown in pots (large ones) and being transplanted. In fact, they handle all sorts of torture and rebound just fine but the main roots of the plant have to be in place for many months in order for it to send up bloom spikes. In my garden I have never gotten large 'chokes', only about the size of a lemon - which is fine by me, I snip them, drop them into the microwave, blast them for 4 minutes on high, whip up some fresh garlic and mayo and then pig out. I quit sowing my own seeds when I discovered that Campbell Road Nursery in south Raleigh pretty much always has them available in the late summer. Usually Green Globe and Imperial Star in gallons for around $4 or $5.

Hello- The best part of the New England Grows! trade show (not a flower show) was meeting Cady - first time I have ever met a cyber friend in person, too - what a delight! Next best were the lectures - a couple of which might be of interest to posters here. In terms of the "room" thread Tony has going ("Come into the garden, Maude" thread), P. Allen Smith of cable TV fame took the concept of the garden room to the limit. IMO he was obnoxious and commercial. Advised having your clients bring in paint chips and fabric swatches to match flower colors to the other decorative elements of the outdoor rooms and also to match to any indoor rooms looking out on the garden - all needs to match and look well together. . . the garden designer as exterior designer, based on the interior designer model. He sells books to keep all of your swatches, paint chips, and plant labels in order. A shameless promoter of his shows, books, and other paraphinalia. He heavily promoted his "recipe cards" for creating the "perfect containers." A paint-by -number approach to gardening which makes "the public", as he kept saying, seem really stupid. Enough of P. Allen. Lucinda Brockway, the garden historian and restoration expert mentioned at the beginning of this thread, gave an excellent presentation on the practical aspects of garden restoration. She is known for her authentic museum-quality restorations of historical properties like Strawberry Bank in NH and Fort Ticonderoga in NY. For this presentation, she showed many slides of work she has done in the restoration of historical homes. In this work her efforts were not to create historically correct garden landscapes down to the last detail, but rather to meld the old with the new into livable landscape gardens for her clients. Although she herself did not use these terms, I felt she was in effect saying she sometimes uses authentic plants in a new gardening style(such as colonial plants in island beds in the lawn) and sometimes uses new plants in an authentic gardening style("Proven Winner" annuals in Victorian carpet beds). She showed slides of a Colonial home with a modern swimming pool in the back yard and Colonial-style plantings; also a Colonial reproduction housing development for the elderly with complimentary plantings done in the style of the times. The gist of the presentation was to understand that a garden will have a lot of lives and that your work in it is probably not its last. In other words, don't take yourself so seriously when trying to be historically correct in reproducing gardens from the past in homes being lived in; remember they are not historic, museum properties with paid staff to keep them up. She had a good handout plus a flyer for a new book she has co-authored on the restoration of several Newburyport, MA gardens. I have extras if anyone would like them. E-mail me and I will send them off. Lots more, but no more time to post . . . Ginger