Do you need solid purple, or will reddish purple with a white edge do? I have grown plenty from seed and they are very easy but it took me two winters to get blooms and it was a seed mix so I had to wait all that time to weed out the colors I didn't want. Or are you talking about the short pale lavender dianthus? I grew that from seed too. I didn't collect seed this year and I didn't write down which pot bloomed which color, but they will bloom again next spring/early summer and I have plenty to share. I was growing them for the darker red with white edges so I weeded out the solid colors - oops.

Hello ditas I prun my SAC in early spring.. Here in TN we haven't gotten much rain later so every day I fill a 2 gal bucket that I drilled a small hole in the bottom and I fill the bucket and the water slow leaks out the bottom and the bucket is at the base of the clematis, I have many other clematis and most of them when I planted them I put a 3" piece of PVC pipe in the hole and thats how I water most of my others, from the bottom up.. I just fill the PVC pipe with water daily when its this dry and I have found if you spend a light extra time when planting them it just makes life a little easier later on... Just make sure the pvc pipe sticks up about 3 or 4"above the ground level. Also makes fertilizing them with liquid fertlizer easy. Relocating them will set them back. I currently have 22 clems. Sandy

I have a pretty good H. 'Hoosier Harmony'. It has (accidentally) had a lot of fertilization. Maybe that is the key. It also does well in containers with lots of water and fert. I have been growing the 2 sisters H. 'Sweet Sunshine' and H. 'Sunny Delight' for about 3 years now. Both are from the same batch of seeds from the cross that Bob Solberg did of H. 'Sweet Susan' and H. 'Tokudama Aureonebulosa'. I do like both, but for different reasons. Sunny Delight seems to have the best gold of any I have seen and is a very good grower. Sweet Sunshine, on the other hand, is a bit slower grower, but I really like the very round leaf shape and corrugation that is now showing as it matures. I have both growing in near full sun till about 3pm, along with most of my other fragrant ones. Previous years when I water regularly, most of them would stay looking pretty good. This year, between the heat, drought, and lack of extra watering, most of the fragrant ones look pretty rough right now, but Sweet Sunshine and Sunny Delight have held up better than most of the rest. Sweet Sunshine has a slightly better fragrance, but frankly both are a disappointment compared to even H. 'Fried Bananas'. If you just want to perfume the yard with fragrance, stick to H. plantaginea or H. 'Royal Standard'. Another one I just added this year is H. 'Tortilla Chip'. It is the all gold sport of H. 'Stained Glass'. It has excellent gold color, and the fragrance was pretty good. It did scorch pretty bad this year, and it is too early for me to know how good of a grower it is, but it might be worth a look. As a side note, my Sweet Sunshine, in it's 3rd year this summer, has put out a sport on 2 eyes. It looks pretty good so far as a medium green with a gold edge. I will divide it off next year if it comes back.

My 'Sweet Jane' is in her third year - I can't smell anything from her, but others I gave roses to said they could. I also can't smell anything (yet) my 'Julia Child', so it's likely just me. She tried valiantly to bloom all summer, but the Japanese Beetles decimated all my roses this year. She came through the winter like a champ, only had to take off a bit at the tips. I get mostly candelabra blooms. She's growing upright and narrow for me, but 'Poseidon' is swamping everything around him (including SJ). Next spring I'll try pruning her hard, as suggested for HTs, and I'll see if she bushes out any more.