Bonus question:

Who can recommend some good nurseries in my area? I'd say within a couple hour drive or so (so MD, much of VA, DE, parts of PA & WV are fair game).

Preferably somewhere with a good selection & knows how to care for trees...not a big box "set 'em out and never water them all summer" type place.

Keeping in mind I haven't lived in the area for a while now: the fanciest old-line nurseries in the DC area (i.e., you could get good advice, but you'll pay for it) are: Behnke's, American Plant, and Merrifield in VA. Near Annapolis Homestead Gardens was once considered very good. Valley View seems to be Baltimore's premiere nursery and McLean nursery had undoubtedly the broadest selection of hollies in the western hemisphere, at very reasonable prices.
(PNW wholesalers no longer produce most of the better hollies because of their invasiveness out there. Why mess around with american when you can get a hardy strain of English holly at McLean?)

HOWEVER, sorry DC area nurseries, but the BEST place to buy general landscape plants if you live in DC is: drumroll please...Colesville Nursery near Kings Dominion. They are reasonably priced, AND the inventory is fully computerized and online. You have to be organized. Know what you want, show up well before closing, and a nice young person will drive you around in a golf cart to pick out everything you need. Please, if you're uninformed and are going to ask for "something with red leaves for a place by my drain spout", please don't waste their time and stick to a local nursery. I don't want them to stop selling retail. I once rented a box truck and drove a bunch of stuff back here. That was a key purchase for getting the semi-rare backbone of the garden built up; frankly I wish I'd bought more. Stuff like Acer japonicum 'Vitifoilium' that a DC area nursery would charge $130+ for was $60. I almost can't believe I'm "giving away" this tip...but, I've bought most of those type plants that I need and now focus on semi-ungrowable rarities haha.

Farther afield (just informationally, obvious): PDN's display garden is incredible but some of the plants in it will be difficult - longterm - in the DC area. If you go down there you must see Camellia Forest, too, although their current nursery site doesn't have nearly as many rarities as the old homestead did. The staff is very friendly though. Going north, Rarefind's rhododendrons are incredible in spring. Tripleoaks is a must visit if you are driving up there, probably unique among east coast nurseries in having a display garden that rivals what you could see at say, Sonoma Horticultural in California. (with different plants, mind you) Styer's in SE PA near Longwood was once one of the most celebrated midatlantic nurseries but has been through several ownership changes culminating in their purchase by Urban Outfitters; they still have some nice plants but their focus is on expensive trinkets for the McMansions of Philly area bobos.
Weston in Massachusetts is IMHO the last of the great horticultural nurseries on the east coast, outlasting many fallen flags such as Princeton nurseries; the closest we ever had to something like a Hilliers in SE England. Need a 15' tall Fagus 'Rotundifolia' and are willing to pay $10,000 for it? We can take care of that. Broken Arrow and Twombly in Connecticut are probably almost in that category too; with Broken Arrow having a well run mail order operation and being the world's best source for Kalmias, of course.

davidrt28:

You said "PDN's display garden is incredible but some of the plants in it will be difficult - longterm - in the DC area. "

Why? Zone pushing (i.e., winterkill issues long-term)? Summer heat?

BTW I'd hate to seem unfair by leaving anyone out. My list was specifically biased towards trees & shrubs because I think that's what you are interested in. If, for example, you want to buy a ton of perennials, you must go to Groff's Plant Farm in Lancaster Co. PA.
I'm also leaving out a couple places that do sell retail but have frankly given me a bad attitude vibe, and/or sold bad plants. I won't be naming them but if you're thinking, "why didn't he mention xxx", that's a _possible_ reason. I've been collecting plants for over 20 years so I'm aware of most of the usual suspects.

"Why? Zone pushing (i.e., winterkill issues long-term)? Summer heat?"

Yes. To me - and I visited years ago but I've heard it only got better - that plants that really stood out there WERE the well grown subtropicals, like the huge clump of Erythrina and the big Eucalyptus. Maybe if you like hostas, he had a lot of hostas worth seeing, I could care less about hostas so they weren't noticeable to me. So, those plants might not last as long in DC. That part of NC is truly on the 8a/7b border, everyone's always known, and the new USDA map confirmed it.

Lots of stuff I see growing even here closer to DC are eventually doomed, I think.

We have to remember - despite recent warming, and regardless of your opinions on climate change, etc...in the RECENT PAST meteoroligically, most of this area has been well below 10 below zero F (at least N and W of I-95 in the last 20 yrs. (In '96 Dulles airport was at 10 below and BWI only a couple degrees warmer).

In the 80s, most of VA outside the beltway (Dulles airport specifically) as well as most of MD N/W of I-95 dipped into the teens below zero on more than one occasion. I think in '84, '85, and '87 (I'd have to dig through the NOAA archives to know for sure).

That kind of cold would wipe out most Cedrus deodara (lots of those around here), heavily damage Magnolia grandiflora, and probably kill Lagerstromia to the ground.

Even if the climate is warming overall, we're fools to just assume that a string of winters like the late 70s - mid 80s just simply can't/won't happen again.

Dulles Airport is _really_ cold, it's at the base of a valley though this is only fully apparent if you're far away from it, at a location like "Mirror Ridge" in Sterling. Its record low is -18F! And that's only since the 1960s, it doesn't even account the incredible cold spell at the end of the 19th century, when the Atlantic froze as far south as Virginia Beach (think about that for a second) and central London had its coldest temp. in modern history of 9F. I wouldn't necessarily compare it with all suburban or rural locations outside DC though. Certainly the all time record lows for anywhere to the N or W of DC are -10F or below - and of course DC's all time low is -15F in the 1920s but Baltimore's is only -7F, but I don't know if it actually got that cold everywhere in the 80s or 90s. Closer to bodies of water or urban areas, and probably on certain ridges, there are places that haven't been below about -6F in a long, long time. In 1994 my garden in western Fairfax County was around -10F which was quite devastating, an 9' Quercus myrsinifolia with almost a 1" caliper stem was completely killed to the ground, for example. I remember 96 also being cold but not as damaging for whatever reason. For example Colonial Beach, VA, had its all time record low of -6F in 1996; they probably benefited somewhat in 94 from the still open waters to their north.

Agree with you generally though, that people tend to plant too optimistically, based on the recent mild winters we've been having. No Trachy palm, and very few camellias, would have survived 1994; though at least the camellias can in theory sprout from the base. For a camellias I intend to be rock solid parts of the landscape, I'm only planting the C. oleifera hybrids, in case it ever goes below 0F here. (I'm w/in 1 mile of the Bay) For others that I'm just planting because they are beautiful, they will just have to come back from the roots if it gets that cold. Even in a mild winter here - and they all have been for the past 10 years IMHO - something like a 'Red Jade' was totally burned by having morning sun hit it in winter. It recovered from the roots, but then the deer chomped that whole recovering shoot off. Bastards! That was too much for the poor thing.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/Historic_Events/DC-Winters.htm

Well, the last 10 winters have been mild-to-average, but certainly not below average for an extended period. 2003 and 2004 were kinda cold, had extended freezes, but it never went below 0F in most of the western DC suburbs, to my best recollection. I had a Cycas panzhihuaensis survive those winters, on a raised bed with mulch. Of course it dies back to the bulb. Here along the Chesapeake the slightly wetter winters, though less often close to 0F, are harder on this plant which comes from dry-winter China.

This post was edited by davidrt28 on Mon, Jun 3, 13 at 15:58

Good points, David.

FWIW for the Balt-DC area as a whole, Dulles is very cold...but DCA is ridiculously warm at the same time, when it comes to frost/freeze/winterkill issues.

DCA has a longer frost-free season on average, IIRC, than TALLAHASSEE FLORIDA!!! IAD, however, only has a few days longer on average than my native Akron, OH. I'm closest to BWI and that's the best representation of my climate (my home thermometer, when it worked, usually ran within a degree or two of BWI). It tends to be midway between DCA & IAD during cold events, and on hot summer days also tends to run in the middle...but sometimes it's the hottest.

Few places in the area are as cold as Dulles or as warm as National.

08/09 had some cold spells. In Jan 2009, BWI got to 2 above, and I think Dulles hit zero officially. DCA was about 8 above, I think...but my home thermometer registered -3F when I got up that morning. That's the only below-zero reading I've seen since I moved here in '07.

Yeah. Elevation plays a role too. I can even imagine that the south facing slopes of Georgetown are milder still than National; because even though they don't have the water to their north, they are south facing, are urbanized, and have good air drainage. I'd rather be at a place like the Calvert Cliffs than have a house at the same location that's practically at sea level. (also helps avoid flooding, obviously) But...the more water there is an any direction, the more likely it will warm things up. That's why, I believe, a Trachy did survive 1994 on Solomon's Island, MD.

How does "Burgundy Belle" do around here?