We used to have an excellent mail order nursery on the mainland, The Perennial Garden, this was by far my favorite place to order from. They carried quite an extensive list of Geraniums and other must have plants but like so many others they closed the mail order side of the business and I don't know if the other side of the business is still going. Local nurseries around here don't carry perennial geraniums to any extent unless it happens to be "Plant of the Year" which is a shame. Some of them can be used as ground covers, gone over with a mower when starting to look ratty, cut and come again :o). Lots of uses for this very versatile plant.

Prairiemoon2, Thanks for your kind comments. The garden, parts of it now well over 10 years old, is indeed quite different now (think overgrown jungle, especially in the perennial areas closer to the house), but this back fence edge of the shrub border looks pretty much the same in photos from year to year. Most of the shrubs are cutback shrubs and dwarf varieties, although those certainly grow some too. :) Changes that are most noticeable in these areas (to me at least) are what is not there - most of the original perennials! The spring daffodils, the Rozannes, and the daylilies are about all that is left on this corner. The other wetter side has more perennials because fewer shrubs can handle the drainage issues. Those are indeed Cornus, Cornus alba 'Elegantissima' to be specific. They were cut down to 30 inches (and thinned) this spring and have grown to about a foot over fence height now. This back garden faces due south and the silvery shimmery look of the sun glowing through the cornus against the dark green solid arborvitaes is a constant in my summer garden (the red twigs are nice too, especially with snow on the ground, but could use more of a backdrop than a fenceline. The Emerald arborvitaes have of course gotten much taller and fatter than in the picture, as has the Viburnum opulus Stirilis, a very fast growing viburnum, whose leaves form the background of the last picture, the dwarf lilac, the buttonbush (now a small tree), etc. However, the grasses are what have grown the most!. The Panicum at this end and the Miscanthus Strictus at the other are huge - as wide as my outstretched arms. They still have Rozanne sprawling around their bases, but I have had to move and transplant them as things changed. (I originally only had Rozanne at the one end of the border (the view shown in the picture) but eventually rather than toss the ones that were being crowded out, I had to try them in the wetter garden (where they have done fine) and across the narrow path to the tree/shrub border (not shown). Donnabaskets, sorry I just noticed that my pixs don't really show Rozanne much! LOL. Thing is I don't point the camera down into the bottom of this bed much. You can't tell but this bed is really a drainage swale with the bed itself dropping several feet down and then going up again mostly on the other side of the fence. Rozanne does nicely in the higher areas on both sides of the swale weaving its way through and around many much larger plants. This I believe is its real strength. The Rozannes are very versatile sturdy plants to survive my garden's crowding, the varying moisture conditions and heavy clay soil, and the changing shade conditions (non-existent to light shade to heavy shade to covered up entirely by large grasses and shrub branches), as well as frequent transplanting and being hacked and pruned and pulled by me. I just recently chopped down a Lysimachia Alexander that finished blooming and whose foliage was going bad and pulled and rearranged the long arms of a nearby Rozanne to cover the bare spot! It sulked for a day or so and then righted all its flowers and filled the spot nicely. Donnabaskets, you simply can't go wrong with Rozanne in a mixed border. BTW, on my heavy clay soil the Rozannes stayed rounded clumps for the first two seasons, before beginning their career as a weaver "extraordinaire" in the garden - and I really do have bloom on them every year from early July into October on plants that were bought six seasons ago.

Those pictures dissappeared fast!! Kathi

A fungicide drench will certainly help, but in most cases will not eliminate rust. On the backs of the leaves, the areas are raised and fuzzy in texture as well as rust colored. This is because rust is spread by spores and that is where they are. The most important step in eliminating rust is to rogue out the infected/leaves or plants, so that the spores are not present and able to infect further.