If you still have annona squamosa seeds, I can trade you a couple of potted gojiberry bushes for them. If interested contact me at ctboring@yahoo.com.

My lists aren't up to date, but I do have plans to trade if you're interested. Thanks! Tony

I can't figure out what your goals are for this area. Do you want to screen the chairs from view? Curb appeal and interest from inside. I do not care about screening chairs from view. In fact, I do not want anything so tall and wide that we wouldn't be able to look out when sitting on our porch. You said you replanted, what is there now? You will be surprised how tall Joe-Pye weed gets. It looks great with feather reed grass, coneflower and sedum. All of these perennials have good winter interest, and can take snow load. But unless you add some shrubs for structure, these may not be the best choices. I'm not sure how the maple relates to this planting area. I think you might be happier if you widen the bed to include the maple and use groups of three to five shrubs to fill in the space between. That little evergreen could use a couple of buddies, going out towards the spruce. I would love to see more repetition (small plants repeated in groups)and structure from the shrubs, instead of one of this and one of that. "That little evergreen" will eventually meet her demise too. It's a dwarf Alberta Spruce and it gets terrible tip burn. I'll be replacing her within a few seasons I'm sure. Most of my neighbors have already taken theirs out. The raised bed has a mixed bag of tricks.... Iris, Turtlehead, 2 sedum, a pinks, japanese hakone grass, joe pye weed, Tiger Eye Sumac and a couple other perennials. I knew they'd get crowded last year so I planned to thin them out this year. I am considering widening the bed to include the maple too. Maybe in 2011. I don't want to set myself up to only half-ass these projects. And hubby hates it when I start killing grass for planting beds.... I have to choose my battle there!... that battle is probably better fought next year! As of today, if I HAD to choose what to put in that spot, I would probably choose Silver Feather Maiden Grass. I have a 3-year old clump in my back garden that I was thinking of moving anyway, so I'm giving some very serious thought to that proposition. And then there is still the option of a structure of some sort. I'm going to shop around a bit to see what there might be. I love Ken's idea of an armillary sphere. We have a few of them in the house as bookshelf art. And we have an armillary style sundial in our back garden. I bought it for him on our honeymoon! I've been giving a lot of thought to paying for a designer to draw up a plan for our front yard. I know I need to remove the rock... I can't imagine how many tons of rock the previous owners had delivered to this house.... too bad it's rock mulch and not boulders. In some places, it's 8" or more thick. But, the good news is that with the heavy duty landscape plastic that was used, we RARELY have weeds. The bad news is that once I take all that up, the soil is going to not have touched oxygen for 8-9 years. Ugh.

"watered occasionally" tells the story right there. Until the roots have grown out of the root ball/shape from the pot they were growing in and can get moisture from the surrounding soil, they need to be watered, just as they were in the nursery where you got it - probably daily, maybe more often. Roots will grow fast, IF WATERED, but you need to give them a chance to acclimate to their new life in the ground. Plants need the equivalent of an inch of rain for the first 2 years or so of almost all trees and shrubs. I would water well, a really long slow watering to really soak the root ball, rig up some shade for it if the weather is as beastly hot as it seems to be along the East Coast, and mulch around it if you haven't already done so - as widely as possible, no deeper than 4" and no mulch in the inch or so next to the trunk. Continue to water when a finger stuck into the soil - dig under the mulch to check - down to the second knuckle is dry/warm. If it is still moist, wait and check again, if dry, water slowly so the root ball is again soaked. Hope your Caragana 'Walker' recovers.