Joe, aside from your gazebo, how about an area on the side of your house? Or under a large tree? Before accumulating a zillion plants, I'd take tropicals out on cloudy days. Listen to the weather report, wait until they predicted' cloudy, the next 3 or 4 days. Another option is to set tropicals out one hour, the next day two hours, etc, continue doing this until plants have acclimated. I'd keep the Sans, Chinese Evergreen and Dracaena indoors. Your Lemon-Lime will scorch unless it's placed in a very very shady spot. The same with Chinese Evergreens. Rain is actually good for plants..there's nothing you can do about winds knocking plants down, other than placing a brick inside the pot. Belive me, I'm not far from the 'Windy City.' There are times I've lifted felled plants 7-10 times in an afternoon. As for insects..well, unless you spray the area, 'ants, spiders, earwigs' they manage to find their way in. I don't mind bees, especially for fruiting/flowering plants; they usually leave after doing their thing. lol. Although last year was a Honey-Bee disaster. These bees decided to build a nest in one of my pots. They were entering and exiting through large, side drainage holes. I wasn't aware. While hosing, I must have startled them because the next thing I knew, a swarm of these little b****** were around me. I got stung at least 5 times..This never happened before, and don't know why they chose the one pot to make their nest. Although these bees are tiny, their stingers hurt like he**. Are you in a woody/tree area? If not, there's less chance of creepy-crawlers making a home in your soil/mix. Joe, was your Pachira in direct sun? My two do much better outside, since they're in a shadier spot. In summer, mine are cared for as tropicals, in winter, like succulents. Don't forget squirrels. They've eaten several holiday cactus and a very pretty avocado. Including the pit. Other than the things I've mentioned, you have nothing to worry about. lol.. Really, plants love the outdoors. If they need repotting, now is the time. New growth/roots need room to grow. Tropicals enjoy humidity, fresh air and sun. Succulents need fresh air and soak up the sunlight. Your plants will do fine, Joe. Check regularly, and watch them grow. Toni I'm sure your plants will be fine.

While they may not look pretty, I don't think that they will die from this. This is not the ideal time to have to prune plants since they are going to slow down their growth for the winter, but they still have enough greenery that they should be able to survive. Are you sure your ponytails were getting enough light?

Hi, lwowk. I use shade cloth, which you can buy at the Big Box stores in several percents. You need some way to support it. I use two-shelf carts with orchids on the bottom shelf, and drape the shade cloth over the cart. If you can build some sort of structure to drape it over, even a small "shade house", that's even better. Shade cloth lets plenty of air in, and temperatures under the cloth are a lot cooler than without. Without shadecloth, temperatures on a bench reach over 100F in the sun, even when the ambient temperature is below 70. I've stood inside a tiny shadehouse maybe 4 x 6 feet on a hotttt pavement, where it has to be over 120F, and temps in the shade house were bearable. You will get serious burns if the cloth touches leaves at any point. So you do need some space between the cloth and the plant, but it doesn't have to be a lot. On my carts, the distance is a few inches in front, and about 2 feet overhead. For shade lovers, you can use two layers -- two layers of 50% shade cloth = 75% shade. Or two layers of 65% shade cloth = app 88%.

Hello, Averil! Most importantly you'll want to find a shady spot for your tree to transition outdoors. I imagine that even in the UK the sun could burn the leaves. For the rain, perhaps you could just make a sort of "bib" out of plastic or cardboard to slip over the top of the pot on rainy days...but still allowing any moisture to run out of the drainage holes. Josh