I add more Bucks every year. I currently have Country Dancer, Country Squire, Freckles, Hawkeye Bell, Quietness, Distant Drums, Golden Unicorn, Paloma Blanco and Prairie Clogger. In addition, I have several of the red Bucks--unfortunately when I was moving we lost tags and I'm not really sure which ones made the trip. I think its Grif's Red and Night Song. All of these are excellent roses for me. Country Dancer blooms in very large candelabras and is decently resistant to BS. Mine has suffered several mishaps during our move and still came back strong. For me it tends be more spreading than upright. Country Squire is a big shrub rose that never quits blooming and in the spring and fall will reward you with hundreds upon hundreds of blooms. I don't spray this rose regularly as it has a fairly high resistance to BS. Freckles has beautiful HT style speckled blooms. It is more upright - at least in my garden it is capable of going head to head with Peter Mayle its nearest neighbor. Good BS resistance. Hawkeye Bell is a perfectly shaped bush, with perfectly shaped blooms and decent fragrance. Good BS resistance. Quietness - one of my new favorites - absolutely clean, beautiful, fragrant pale pink or creamy white blooms and a vigorous grower even in a difficult drought year. I just put two in this spring from RU (DH bought one and I bought one). They are almost 4' now. I am so impressed with this rose. Distant Drums is a big healthy bush with those odd colored but very enticing blooms. It reblooms quickly. It is the Buck most prone to BS in my garden, but it is also planted in the most difficult location. Its only been in the ground a season is something like 4'. Golden Unicorn was purchased late in the season and is still very small. Its repeated 3 or 4 times and stays clean. Its doubled in size. This is the one my mother-in-law always asks for. Paloma Blanco is a very good white rose with good fragrance, clean habit and prolific bloom. Unfortunately mine is virused, so I'll have to dig it up. If Heirloom carries it virus indexed, I will replace it. The best white HT type rose I grow. Prairier Clogger - red, fragrant, single, vigorous, disease free and free blooming. What more could you ask for? I wish I had found this rose sooner, I would have used multiples of it across the front of my house instead of the reds I have planted there now. Grif's Red(?) and Night Song(?) - One of these throws monster long canes and grows like a weed. They are both exceptionally good reds and I have a lot of reds. They are planted in front my house and do justice in a highly visible location. The one I think is Night Song is more prone to BS than the other. Neither are particuarly difficult to keep clean. Both have some fragrance. One of the things I like about the Buck roses is that I do not have to battle canker in the spring with any of them. It always amazes me how healthy they are when...

I have purchased from just about everywhere in order to feed my addiction....lol. When I first started out I gave no consideration to anything but a pretty face and ordered whatever from wherever. Now that I have hundreds of daylilies I've kept note of which ones are my best and worst performers and where I got them from. With the exception of Blue Ridge (whose plants were huge when I received them and still the biggest and most vigorous)...bigger isn't necessarily better when it comes to daylily fans. Most of the ones from southern growers were huge and have dwindled down not only in size but vigor. Northern grown plants came smaller in size but have bulked up. Of course there are always exceptions and I have some that came from the south or California and are great plants.....but the majority from warmer climates just aren't the stars in my garden. I don't have to worry about rust here (zone 4) but hardiness is the biggest concern and which ones will bloom the most in my shortened season. If they barely survive my winters I end up losing fans or the entire plant and those that struggle end up composted. I used to mail-order exclusively but now I visit local daylily farms (New England in general) and see what does well and base my purchases on performance and vigor mostly. Celeste

Thanks for the words of encouragement and photo ideas grannybj65, I have a really nice digital camera and plan to take LOTS of photos all along the way as I develop the garden. The photos linked here were taken by a good friend. I have an eye for good snapshots so once I'm down there I'll be taking dozens of photos from all angles and different weather conditions. The joy of digital photography - you never run out of film. LOL One of the things I like to do is take a series of photos from the same angle all day long on a sunny day to get a general idea of where the shady and sunny spots are. Doing that a few times throughout the year as the Earth changes kilter I'll perfect an image in my mind of where best to place different plants based on their light/shade tolerance. Looking at the photo of the front of the house dead-on, I just got a great idea. Facing the house, the living room is on the right side with the single window and the kitchen is on the left side with the double windows. In front of the double windows inside is the kitchen sink, so it is not a spot that will have tremendous "looking out the window" appeal. So, as the cogs turn in this hard head of mine, I'm visualizing lattice from the center pole on the porch going to the left corner, then around to where the porch meets the house. Then cutting a rectangular window out of the center of the front of the lattice and framing it a bit so there is a clear view out to the road from the kitchen window. And then I can visualize the lattice painted white (or more likely light gray as I'm not too fond of white outside) and covered in Scarlet Runner Bean and Clematis with maybe some "Joseph's Coat" (Amaranthus tricolor) in front and some dwarf Cannas with some "Love lies Bleeding" (Amaranthus sp.) along the side. The scarlet, violet, purple and deep reds and burgundys will all be in harmony with one another, at least until I decide on a totally different look down the road. I can have a nice metal frame rocking deck seat out on the porch hidden away behind the wall of vines where I can sit and enjoy the shade - and a good spray from the gardening hose on all the vines will create a nice cooling breeze. Well, it's a thought anyway. :) I saw on eBay this evening someone in San Diego California is selling several batches of Tillandsias (the common T. ionantha). They are offering them as a box of 50 child fist-sized clumps of them for around $20 if I recall - quite cheap. I immediately thought how neat it would be to buy 50 or 100 clumps and then carefully wire them to a wire-frame wreath for a living, blooming front door wreath, especially once the front porch is semi-latticed in and well shaded. A few sprigs of Spanish Moss draping down from the wreath here and there would further kick off the effect. It would live on the wet air, constantly regenerate itself with new growth, and bloom off and on throughout the year. During the colder months I could bring it inside and hang up it in the living room window where it can get plenty of bright indirect light. Ok, I'll shut up now.

This is a quote from The Southern Living Gardening Book: "Plants take 2 to 3 years to come into full production but then furnish spears every spring for 10 to 15 years or more. They take up considerable space but do so in a grand manner. Use along a sunny fence or as a background for flowers or vegetables. (You don't have to plant every plant all together. You can scatter them around through ornamental beds and just walk around to harvest.) Set out seedlings or roots (not wilted, no smaller than an adult's hand) in fall or winter. Make trenches 1 ft. wide and 8-10 inches deep. Space them 4 to 6 ft. apart. Heap loose soil enriched with composted manure at bottom of trenches and soak well. Space plants 1 ft. apart, setting them so that tops are 6 to 8 inches below the top of the trench. Spread roots out evenly. Cover with 2 inches of soil and water again. As young plants grow, gradually fill in trench, taking care not to cover growing tips. Soak deeply whenever soil begins to dry out at root depth. Do not harvest spears the first year. The object is to build a big root mass. When plants turn brown in late fall or early winter, cut stems to the ground. The following spring you can cut your first spears; cut only for 4 to 6 weeks or until appearance of thin spears indicates that roots are nearing exhaustion. Then permit plants to grow. Cultivate, feed, and irrigate heavily. The third year you should be able to cut spears for 8 to 10 weeks. Spears are ready to cut when they are 5-8 inches long. Thrust knife down at 45 degree angle to soil; flat cutting may injure adjacent developing spears." "Jersey Knight is the best variety for Southern Growers. Male hybrids typically produce more and larger spears, because they don't put energy into seed production. Such selections still produce an occasional female plant." At my old house, I followed the above instructions and had asparagus there. (I live in East Central MS, about 200 miles inland from the Gulf Coast.) I made a three foot wide raised bed alongside my vegetable garden and planted nothing in it but asparagus. Ever. That is one disadvantage to asparagus and why they are so expensive. You cannot plant anything else in their bed. That soil only produces something edible for 2 to 3 montsh each year. In my youthful ignorance, I bought the typical order of plants, which is 20, and then split them with a friend to save money. Ten plants never produced enough spears at one time to feed my family of four. However, the plants did well, and required very little work except feeding, watering, and giving them a good mulch each year to keep down weeds. If I had space, I would definitely grow them again, but plant AT LEAST 20 roots this time. The Gardening Book says asparagus will grow as far south as the Lower South, which is all the way down except a narrow strip along the coast. Asparagus roots are not that expensive, though you may have to hunt for Jersey Knight. If you want to grow them, do a really good job of preparing the soil and digging the trenches and see what happens. It's not much to lose and you just might succeed!