fearadyn and markparsons, I will email you sometime today. fearadyn, I think I. tintcoria should be OK with your summers. To give you an idea of what can kill it, a friend in coastal Southern California had a big, established one. Last summer they had a weird extended heatwave for more than a month. Highs were mostly over 85 and lows 65-70. Here's what he said in late September: "The big fragrant impatiens, tinctoria, has just collapsed and died out. At first it just wilted and it sort of recovered from the wilt during the night, then it just dropped flat to the ground without recovering at night, and then it just turned into brown mush. It never burned, it was not the sun, it was the heat." I think his plant came back from the tuber. It's too bad heat zones aren't in greater use. In general, I think cool growers would be happy with summers in heat zones 1, 2 and 3, with zone 4 borderline. Here is a link that might be useful:

Funny you should say that jel. Last year, I caught the hollies before coming to home depot. There was only one sex listed, and I called the nursery to tell them forget it unless I can get both. They also told me that it was both sexes on one plant. It was also either Blue Boy or Blue Girl. But they are just idiots. Maybe someday there will be a unisex cultivar, but Boy and Girl definitely are not. If there were such a thing as a Boy Girl holly, it would be raising such a stir in the horticulture community that we all would have heard about it by now. Rest assured, it's a farce. Vic, Winter shade is, well, shade in the winter. Or more accurately, shade when the ground is frozen. So this would include March too. Like you suspect, broadleaf trees, as opposed to evergreens, do not supply winter shade. You could supply winter shade by erecting a burlap fence on the south and west sides of the hollies, or by heavily mulching them with a mulch that does not pack. Straw or hay would be optimal, but leaves will work if you shred them or run them through the mower blades first. Raw fallen leaves pack too much, and won't allow anything to breath underneath, and you risk molding live holly leaves. Even with shredded leaves, I would fluff them up in the late winter for some air circulation. Remember hollies will never get to be as big in MN as in other places in the nation. Give or take some, I think I would plant them on 3 ft centers(from the center of one plant to the center of the next). Rick

The Japanese red Maples are not grown in pots, they are in the ground and these people up north go through alot to get these trees through the winter including building mini green houses around them or literally boxing them up in cardboard and filling it with leaves! These people are inspiring and I read it all on this site so do a search under maples in zone 2 and read for your self...it just might make you want to try and grow somehting out of your zone too! Here is what I am thinking...I live on the boarder between zone 5 and zone 6. I usually only get plants that are hardy to zone 5 but these viburnum are going to be a challange. So what I am going to do is this. Over winter these shrubs in an unheated basement with lights. On nice days (over 32 degrees) I will bring them out for fresh air and sunshine and plant them in the spring on a hillside. I will ammend the soil and monitor their water. Basicaly give them the perfect environment in which to grow. I will also root several cuttings from them to have in case my experiment fails so I will still have this plant to grow in containers. Then in the winter I will place bales of pine straw around them (I will use the straw as mulch in the spring). Then on the milder days that is all that I will do. On the days that the tempertaure drops below freezing I will place an old window across the top of the straw bales to allow the light in but keep the cold out, create a sort of cold frame. We will monitor the temperature inside when the glass is on to make sure that it doesn't get to hot inside, perhaps keep one side of the glass lifted slightly to allow exces heat to escape. There really is only about a month at the most of really cold weather and that is usually in spurts of a week here and a week there. Otherwise it isn't that bad where we live (back in the woods). I know that this sounds like alot but these stay relatively small so I think that it is possible and besides what else do we have to do in the winter except wait for spring? Thanks for your input and I will let everyone know how successful (or unsuccessful I am in the spring of 2008!) Vicki

I like the book of poetry idea, is there an author local to you? Even if she doesn't read English, a beautiful, (illustrated?) slim volume can be treasured. Or, is there a local artist or artisan? I got my brother a handsome artisanal quilt for house/cat sitting while we were in North Carolina for a few months. To your other comment, when I was in Normandy 40 years ago, there was so much appreciation and affection for Americans. It was really eye-opening for me as a teen. My DFIL fought in the liberation, in Holland, and went back every 5-10years for observances that included luncheons, dinners, parades, laying-of-wreaths, staying with residents in their homes, and young parents bringing their children on their shoulders out to the events with "thank you" signs. His was not an American unit, I don't know who he fought under (he was Polish and escaped POW camp to get to England) but the sentiment was for all the liberators. I have always found the French to be so kind.