My DH and I did them. We have about 17 that are connected with downspouts and spigots and 7 more that just sit under the spouts. I have a water transfer pump. It sits outside the barrels and a hose goes into the opening to pump water. The ones in the picture are high enough that I can just attach a hose or the soakers to them. It takes a while but the water will come out slowly. If you look around you can get the barrels free. I only paid $10 each for mine but the fittings added up to a lot. Brass spigots are at least $5.00 each. The ones on the other side of the house are connected to a soaker hose or I can use the spigot. I have had these 5 years or more. We are looking into getting a well. In case anyone is interested the price quoted is $11,000. if they hit water within 500ft. This includes house and irrigation pumps. Since I have 2 acres, over 3000 hostas and many ferns and a large greenhouse and tropicals, a pond and pool. I will need all the water I can get. 25 mins a day every other day would do just my containers. I had all these plants way before the drought. Don't you think I should be 'Grandfathered' in before the new rules.?

The Miscanthus is behind the daisies which are Anthemis Susannah Mitchell, which is short with small button blossoms. If you can see a little pink on the right, that is a Knock Out Rose next to the Miscanthus, which hasn't had a yellow leaf on it through this dry spell and last year was the last thing blooming in my yard. The Pennisetum Hamlin is very tame and fits right under that BBush. There are a few others that are taller that are nice. Have you seen the pink blossomed 'Karley Rose'? It is just a little larger than the Hamelin. There is also one called Moudry which I think is gorgeous. BTW, here in zone 5/6 I have not seen a seedling from my Pennisetum. I saw a great combo in someone's front yard... Hardy Hibiscus, Shasta Daisies and Joe Pye Weed with Miscanthus gracillimus. It gets huge and probably wouldn't work for you dtd. But the pretty Pink Hardy Hibiscus, with the Joe Pye Weed was eyecatching. Here is that P. Moudry, wish I had room for that! :-) I just love tabs on a browser, don't you? [g] Nandina are very pretty. They have fall color too, right? Bluestem is great and I wish I had room to grow it. I also love Indian Grass which I didn't dare plant so I put it in a pot this year..lol. Not exactly happy there. [g] You know you are talking about prairie plants there dtd! :-) I see from your OP that you mentioned Joe Pye Weed there already that might be staying. I measured my 'Little Joe' just now and it is about to bloom and stands 45" high. First year in, so don't know if it will get larger. I also measured the bed my Butterfly Bush is in and it is 7ft deep at the point the BBush is planted. I did plant it forward, because my neighbor has an evergreen on the other side of the fence that hangs over a good foot and a half. There are about 5 trees right along my fence line behind that whole bed, so that BBush has to deal with dry conditions for sure. I just looked up 'The Blues'...isn't that so pretty! I came across a grass comparison chart in my travels and posted the link below for anyone interested. Here is a link that might be useful: Grasses comparison chart

Enjoying nature, I never have tried pruning hollies to a certain size. I let mine get to the full size and shape that they're meant to attain. You probably could prune them to any size and shape you want, but after a few years you end up with big thick branches with leaves sticking out of them and it looks unnatural unless you like tightly pruned hedges. I still can hear Neil Sperry's voice in my head on his radio show saying that if you want to prune shrubs into square green boxes, why not just go out and build a plywood box and paint it green. (grin) Who am I to defy Neil Sperry and try to prune my hollies to a certain arbitrary size? So, mine were spaced as far apart as they needed to be in the first place because I had a good idea how big they'd get and they are fine now---roughly 12' tall and 5-6' apart. Those are the Burford hollies on the south side of the house. They shade the south porch from the summer sun, which is precisely what I wanted them to do. On the east side of the house, which is where the front part of the wraparound porch and the front door is located, I planted Dwarf Burford hollies in 2011 and they seem more like the size you'd want. I wanted a naturally shorter shrub there so we could sit on the porch and look out into the yard somewhat at least. Mine have really had to struggle through drought (i think I planted them in April of 2011 and it stopped raining soon thereafter and didn't rain for 90 days that summer) so they have grown relatively slowly for hollies, but now are about 5' tall and about 3-4' wide and they haven't reached their max size yet. I expect them to top out at around 8' tall and 4' wide, but time will tell. They are a loose informal hedge, which fits with our country Victorian house....all relaxed and sort of cottagey. It is your house, though, and they are your shrubs, so you should plant what pleases you and maintain them in the way that makes you happy. I'm a firm believer that a person's landscape plantings should reflect their tastes and anyone who doesn't like it can just go mind their own business. Well, except, I still have Neil Sperry's voice in my head and I agree with his comments about picking the right shrub to begin with so you don't have to prune your shrubs to an unnatural size or shape. That's just me, though. Some people love formally pruned hedges and they should have what they want. All those years of reading Neil's newspaper columns, his magazine and his books when we lived in Texas (as well as listening to his radio show and attending his Garden Shows) trained me to be a certain way as a younger gardener, and I have his voice in my head the way I have my dad's voice in my head, even though he is long gone. Scott, We have native possumhaw hollies and I love them, but they sucker like the devil and we've got one in the front yard we're going to take out. I hate to take it out because it is the bird feeder tree where we hang the feeders, but we'll just move them somewhere else. It just suckers endlessly and I'm tired of dealing with it. We'll leave the ones on the edges of the woods because it doesn't bother us if they form thickets, and the birds love the berries in late winter and early spring, though they won't touch them until all the other berries are gone. When the cedar waxwings are migrating through in spring, they get pretty much drunk on those fermented possumhaw berries. I feel like pretty much everything we plant has one poisonous part or another, so I plant what I want. If kids are around, I keep an eye on the kids, and teach them not to eat plant parts without checking with an adult first. No child has poisoned themselves on anything we grow yet, so I try not to worry about it. (And I grow several types of brugmansias and daturas, but the spiny seed balls are so hideous that I don't think I have to worry about kids getting hold of them and accessing the seeds.) When we were kids we ran all over the neighborhood and played and we all knew to go home immediately when our parents turned on the front porch light. None of us died or ever got seriously injured or ill. It was a wonderful childhood, and we had a woodland, a neighborhood pond, rocky cliffs to climb, etc. I appreciate that we got to be kids with no one hovering over us too much. Times have changed. And, just so you know, most poisonous plant parts have a bad taste, making it less likely kids will eat them. Or, they will cause you to throw up if you ingest them, so kids are not that likely to eat and swallow them. (However, some dogs will eat anything, so that is one thing to keep in mind if you have dogs.) It is a sad commentary on life in this century that kids cannot play tag. No wonder so many children have a weight issue. It is hard to stay physically fit if you cannot do anything because you might get hurt. That is just sad. Dawn

Today January 2, I dug up Comte de Chambord, grafted of Multiflora rootstock. Bluegirl had it for a few years in her alkaline Texas, didn't bloom well so she gave to me, since I have more rain. As multiflora-rootstock, Comte bloomed OK in spring but stingy afterwards, while my 2 other Comte as OWN-ROOT bloom profusely with 4 flushes until snow hit. I have Comte-on-multiflora for 2 years. It's so stingy in the summer I moved it next to the rain-spout in July. Its root was the same size as my marigold !! It became even stingier, despite my using the entire bag of coarse sand to make my clay fluffy. So I dug up Comte grafted on multiflora today, Jan 2, and IT WAS THE MOST PATHETIC multiflora rootstock that I had ever seen in my 3 decades of growing roses !! I already posted the study that showed Fortuniana-rootstock produces more blooms than Dr. Huey, and Dr. Huey produces more blooms than multiflora-rootstock. Left side is Comte de Chambord grafted on multiflora rootstock, right side is a snapdragon annual flower root (sown from seed !!). The snapdragon-flower root is actually larger than the multiflora-rootstock. This 4+ year-old Multiflora-rootstock actually SHRANK in my alkaline clay, despite tons of acidic rain. And it REFUSED to give me own-roots at the side like Dr. Huey-rootstock. Picture taken today, Jan 2 at 39 F or 4 C. Re-post info. from Oct. 2016: Comparing Dr. Huey-rootstock, Multiflora-rootstock, and Fortuniana-rootstock from below link, worth reading: http://roses4az-mevrs.org/wp-content/uploads/An-Overview-of-Fortuniana.pdf Here in the Desert Southwest, with our generally alkaline soils and extreme temperatures, we find that r. multiflora has a shorter life span, losing its vigor after five years. While fortuniana bushes had superior root systems, they had difficulty with the harsh & cold English climate. In a study over several years, Dr. McFadden budded two hybrid tea varieties, Queen Elizabeth and Tiffany, onto three different rootstocks. After counting the number of blooms produced over many growing seasons, the varieties budded onto fortuniana produced significantly more blooms. The fortuniana plants produced about THREE TIMES the number of blooms as those on multiflora and TWICE as many as on Dr. Huey. Additional benefits of Fortuniana include increased resistance to gall, stem dieback, and root disease, such as Phytophtora and Pythium. Bushes planted over 40 years ago in Florida are still thriving. On this rootstock, plants are heavier feeders, as they have five times the feeder roots of more common varieties." http://roses4az-mevrs.org/wp-content/uploads/An-Overview-of-Fortuniana.pdf