I'm not sure---I've looked up Ayesha, and the proper zone for that is 6-9. I'm 5a in Iowa. After a bit of time, the flowers turned a blush pink, and darkened to a mauve color. I'm not seeing if Ayesha starts with white buds or pink/blue. Also, wondering how the leaves are arranged, but I can't find a good description. Does anyone have a good "go to" detailed source for plant descriptions?

Chrsvic, Do you have a planting bar? Look at Musser Forests. Someone here tipped me off to that last year and what a great find! With all the planting I did, it was the best money I spent last year. It is a bit like a shovel, but the bottom is more like a wedge with a foot bar that you can push down on it. It is heavy and you can just put in into the soil, step on it and pull it back and forth until you have a small wedge-shaped hole. Then you put the shrub in. You put the bar on the side of the hole to close it back up. You can just plunk them into the sod. Of course you can't mow around them easily, but I did this in the middle of a meadow and let everything grow up in between. I prepared a rather large border spot and have regretted it. It is a lot of work to keep up (weeding). I suppose if you are in a suburban area with a lot of pressure from neighbors, you may not have the luxury of letting the grass grow up in between them. Elaine suggested this last year. She said that she has done both and the ones plunked down in the grass did better because the animals (rabbits and deer) didn't find them. Adam: The thing about Garden in the Woods is that each plant was $25 or so. If you need 100's, that is a lot of money. NH Nursery sends 10 for $10 or something (cheaper if you buy more. Of course, they are a fraction of the size, but they grow quick. I just have a huge border to fill, so the NH price appealed to me. Once I got them, I was doubly impressed by the size (I expected tiny like the ones I bought from the MA extension service years ago). Most were at least 8-12 inches tall with good roots and many were fairly broad. I bought a package of wild raisin and they were really downright big. I hope the stock is as good this year seeing as I have been raving about it all year! I also bought a lot from Cold Stream Farm. They were great to deal with and the prices were competitive, but NH plants were bigger by far. Sounds like you are close enough to pick up your stock from NH. They send it to the various counties drop off points and give you a date to go and get it. I have to go to Brentwood next Monday in fact. They will also ship, but being this close, I thought it would be better to do the pickup. Jill: The buying season is over with NH Nursery. You can put your name on the list for next year. I will have to check out Mussers. Thanks for the reminder.

Should be getting a good amount of water as well. ===>>> why dont you know.. take a hand trowel.. and dig a 3 inch hole in the ball planted.. and in the soil next to such.. AND FIND OUT ... you say the perennials near are fine.. but the shrub isnt .. that may be because shrub roots are deeper.. and they arent getting the water they need ... problems secondary to a primary issue.. usually mean nothing .. if you fix the primary issue ... ken

As I noted above, I've not seen any beetle damage, though I generally am not viewing this shrub up close, so I can't guarantee that it has absolutely no damage. I ripped out my Blue Muffin because it looked so damaged from the beetles and wasn't much to look at regardless, with no fall color, just an ungainly blob with a short bloom season. Since I don't have space limits, a plant has to be pretty ugly for me to shovel prune it. The beetles overwinter as eggs in branch tips, and you can see which branches have them, so pruning those tips (I burned them in the wood stove) can reduce the problem. But I have two species of wild Viburnum in th woods, so removing all beetle eggs isn't reasonable here. I just choose resistant varieties. I currently have three types of plicatum, and all are quite beetle resistant and far more ornamental than Blue Muffin, which is a far overrated plant IMO. In my garden all the plicatum have a nice structure, good bloom, and striking fall color.