i will make it as simple as i can .... and you will remember the simple explanation ... then gal will come and correct me.. and take it all to a higher level ... climate is 100 variables.. heat.. cold.. humidity ... and you can dream up the other 97 .... zone info.. in its simplest form.. is minimum winter cold ... and probably a bunch of other variables , but who cares ... lol ... so your 5.. is my 5... and st loius 5 ... for winter min ... but i have a conifer friend in st loius ... somewhere down there [kansas city???] .. who cant grow half the conifers i can up here due to summer heat and humidity ... go figure on that .... but we are both z5 .... so when we take the zone info to a nursery to pick out stock.. all we are doing is selecting plants that can live through winter .... as i said.. in its simplest form .... you can learn as much more about it as you want .... the effect of lake MI is two fold ... the amount of snow that covers your garden [lake effect] .. and the extension of the growing season due to that big mass of water you are near .... if you drew a line directly east... to MI .... i would not be surprised if they are z6 .... prevailing winds make fall a bit longer since it takes the water longer to cool .... and the ice in spring makes their weather a bit different than yours ... does the windy city wind blow to the lake.. or from the lake???? THEN.. we can fold in all the micro climate stuff.. like the effects of the cement jungle you live in/near, and how much heat it can retain .... etc .... but... i THINK your prevailing wind pattern is like mine.. from the NW .... so in theory ... you are on the wrong side of lake MI for it to affect you as if you were on the other side .... soooooooo ... if the zone maps tell you you are z5.. then yes you are .... but you MIGHT have a micro z6 ... but at that point you are going to complicate your gardening pleasure.. if you start zone pushing.. and buying plants that may or may not live over winter .... but that is another post .... micro's have a way of falling back to the lower zone every few years ..... ken

Pat, you are in Sunset zone 9, as well as USDA zone 9. Inkneedeep, you are in Sunset zone 18 or 19. This area is hilly to mountainous. Zone 18 is colder, either on a valley floor or up high. Zone 19, warmer, is on the lower slopes, cold temps slide off onto the valley floor, and you are low enough on the slope not to have colder weather d/t altitude. One way to tell is if there ever were citrus orchards by you. If there were, you are definitely zone 19. You two need to buy a sunset western gardening book, or at least check it out at your local library- this info is coming straight out of it ;-).

Hi lovetogrowflowers. I don't think you are bothering anyone. Lucy is right, try not to stress yourself out. Take deep breaths. LOL. I think your plan for the two potted ones are perfect. I read in one of your earlier post asking about if the crawl space was ok and someone I believe said yes. For me, I WOULD strip the leaves first. The brug will be trying to take care of the leaves instead of useing its energy to go dormant. Plus you wouldn't want bugs to sneak in on a leaf and spend the winter eating your brug. :( As for the one in ground...well people cut back or don't cut back for different reasons. One of the biggest I think is for safety and the health of the plant. During the winter the brug branches will freeze so they cut them back so there is less of a chance this will happen. Who wants a mushy rotting brug in spring? How tall is the brug you still have in the ground? How close to the ground is the Y? The experts can chime in if this is a bad idea, but how about if you...1.Stip the leaves. 2.Cut off only the top green tips. (Save them) 3.Mulch as high as you can get it, at least to the Y if it's close to the ground. 4.Cover the brug with a REALY big rubber trash can or tub. 5.Maybe even cover that with an old blanket. Or would that be over kill? The cuttings you could take in and root them. Hopefully none of that was bad advice. Me and Lonny are newbies too. This will be our 2nt winter. We killed one of the two brugs we had last winter. But that was because we brought them in and tried to keep them growing. This year we brought all in again. This winter we have many more, plus young ones. We made a Brug room and have been learning lots. So we are going to give it a try. If they had been bigger, we would have left them out in ground to go dormant. Now that I have writen a novel.(sorry, long winded) Try not to worry, you brought them back to health and they are doing well enough to be around to overwinter, so I think you are doing well. Kim

Julia I completely understand your point. However, unfortunately "landscape" refers to the area of land around your house and usually refers to the shapes and structural elements of plants and hardscape and how they relate to the lay of the land and shape of the home, as opposed to a garden bed. While I can understand why you wouldn't want to post a photo of your home on the Web, that's all that can really be shown to get some landscape advice. Perhaps you could disguise it somehow. Kinda unlikely that anyone will actually know where it is . . . I never have run across a home I've seen posted on the Web. As for the rudeness, well just say, "It takes all kinds" and move on, or else maybe, "Perhaps I am misunderstanding the tone" if you are an optimist! But understandable if you don't want to post, I understand your reticence. In general, from the window into your home that you have shown, it looks like you have an entrance walkway to your front door, and one would generally not want to hide that or block the view as those shrubs do that you are planning on ripping out. So perhaps a couple of shrubs that stay small or a small tree, then underplanted with ground covers. However, if you really don't know what you are doing, perhaps just do grass until you have a clear idea of what you want. I got most of my best ideas from walking around my neighborhood and noticing thing that folks did that looked good. The reason those shrubs were problematic for you is that they were too big for the space as they matured. That's a common mistake that folks make who don't know what they are doing. They don't plan for the eventual mature size of the plants they chose and plant and then they are forever trying to keep them small when they don't want to be. Fortunately plant breeders have come up with many small and dwarf varieties of plants for home owners. Be sure to seek those out and read the labels on the plants that give the mature sizes. You can often also look online to get that information, and now with cell phones with search engines and Web connections to take along, you have a lot more resources at your fingertips. Also, you can search online for types of garden plans, like "walkway garden plan" and find complete plans with plant suggestions. https://www.bhg.com/gardening/plans/special-spots/