I won't suggest specific trees, since zone 7 is just a bit different from what I've got here. (As I write this, the temperature outside with wind chill is -50) Many people fail to see landscaping with trees as dynamic. Plant once and forget. I recently had a customer who wanted a hundred white spruce to plant on 8' intervals aon either side of his driveway. I told him that this was a mistake. They would look cute for a few years, look like a hedge of christmas trees for a few years, and in 20 years his driveway would be a dark canyon. A better way to approach this would be multiple rows, with more space between them. I suggested that he alternate spruce with 'Dart's Gold' ninebark, the ninebark being in front of the spaces in the spruce. The shrub would grow quickly and add interest while the trees were small. Later, the yellow leaves would add brightness, and be a sharp contrast to the dark bottom branches of the spruce. I think this is generally a good idea. A solid row of anything looks funny if one is slower growing, or dies. Alternation adds contrast. I have one side of my driveway lined with shrubs. Originally I put in lilacs with large spaces. Then I put a cotoneaster between each lilac. Then I put a potentilla between each cotoneaster and lilac, but the potentillas alternate with two abbotsford (white) and coronation triumph (yellow). At each end there is a bog rosemary. At another point on the driveway each side goes Bog rosemary, darts gold nine bark, diablo ninebark, darts, diablo, rocky mountain juniper, purple twig dogwood, sea buckthorn, purple twig, buckthorn, rosemary. So ther is an irregular height climaxing at the juniper. The purple of the diablo echos the purple twig, but the buckthorn is grey green compared to the bright yellow of darts gold. Patterns of broken symetry. For trees, you have to be very patient to do it all at once. Some of the trees would be short lived, fast growing trees. Others would grow into the space left when the live-hard-die-young ones shuffled off this mortal coil. So, for example, put in a row of willows or poplar. In your climate willows should block the view of vehicles in a couple years. Willows, poplar and birch have invasive roots. Keep 70 feet away from septic field. (Candidates for HIS side of the fence?) Willow and poplar are diocious. Male plants are less trouble. Spruces are generally shallow rooted, and probably won't disturb the septic field. They will grow quite tall. Perhaps plant a pair of them where they will frame your mountain view when mature. One of the advantages of willow is that when it gets ratty looking, you just cut it off a few inches above the ground, and it will regenerate into a good looking hedge in a summer. Willows have a huge range of height, stem color.

Hi, Ingrid - I've been looking at the cemetery roses, and my own, with thoughts of what I could recommend to you as a central specimen plant. Susan Louise comes to mind. It can grow a bit awkwardly, tall and angular. Ours in the cemetery is a bit lopsided, but beautiful nonetheless. It's a repeat blooming shrub form of Belle Portugaise, with huge, barely-double flowers that nod downward. The flowers end up looking like crumpled hankies thrown all over the bush, a trait that I find endearing. It really shows its R. gigantea ancestry, but its repeat bloom, exquisitely pointed buds, and gorgeous flowers all make it a nice garden plant. I assume it would do well in your heat, since it's fine for us. I was a little surprised to hear about your Mons. Tillier, since ours does so well, but in the cemetery there is some afternoon shade. That probably makes the difference. Mrs. B. R. Cant does well for us, but it is indeed a wider-than-tall rose. Duchesse de Brabant is a classic survivor throughout the foothills, and blooms throughout the summer (yes, the edges do crisp a bit). I keep wondering about Dainty Bess as a possibility, which is not really an antique rose, but can't be beat for its red stamens and beautiful single flowers. Spray Cecile Brunner would look great as a free-standing tall shrub - it repeats very, very well. Our New Orleans Cemetery Rose is proving to be quite large and simply gorgeous, with lilac-pink flowers and silvery reverse. The blooms aren't huge, but the flower clusters are. It may be Pierre de St. Cyr. We hope to have quite a bit of it propagated for next year's open garden. Anita

Addendum to my first post: add dog roses the the pest shrubs. I may keep a couple of these if I find I can keep them cut back to reasonable form and dimensions, but they have a tendency to grow octopus canes and sprawl all over the surrounding area, flattening their neighbors. And DH has reminded me of some plants of hawthorn. Suzy, glad to hear from you (everybody else who's interested, too), and I want to make a request: could you give me the botanical names of the plants you talk about? In many cases I don't know the plants, or may know the scientific name and not the common one. Some of my gardening is conducted in Italian after all. If you need the botanical names of any of the plants I named, let me know: I know most of them or can look them up. My basic idea is I think similar to yours: I want a woodland, slightly prettied up with appropriate plantings. I'm leaning toward native plants just because I know there's a good chance they'll grow, which in thin dry clay in shade is a major consideration; also there are plenty of nice herbaceous plants among the local flora. And I want a natural look, to employ a much abused word; I mean I mostly want plants that look as they could be natives even if they aren't. Shrubs are difficult. I want some low-growing shrubs in particular, not too showy nor too plain, and like the thought of evergreen foliage, which is almost completely absent in the local flora. This might be my chance to grow the box my soul longs for, and which is so hard to site in my conditions; and mahonias seem to like it here. I have M. aquifolium in the shade garden above the woods and it seeds itself about a bit, which is slightly alarming. Sarcococca should do well, and also Daphne odora, the only one easy to get, though it seems to need some clay under its feet: I lost two babies down there, one when the locust crashed and it ended up in sun, one that went too long without watering. All these will probably need some digging with a pick, and possibly some clay brought in. A shrub/small tree, native, that I thought of last night, is Cornus mas. This is modestly pretty in spring and might do very well along the drainage; and now that I think of it, Viburnum x burkwoodii which I have planted in various parts of the garden, tough as nails, fragrant, and handsome. Also yew would do well, if I want a column of evergreen here and there. Holly?? It's a relict species from the glacial era that grows wild here and there in the province, though not in our immediate area. A handsome low groundcover is Ruscus hypoglossum, something like our native R. aculeatus, butcher's broom but not prickly and more orderly in its growth, and very tough. Similar but taller growing is the related Danea racemosa which also does fine. I plan on keeping Vinca well away from my shade garden: too messy and invasive. Now that I think of it, how could I forget hellebores? They would seed beautifully, too. H. viridis is local and handsome, and the H. orientalis types would look at home. Let me add epimediums to the list of possibilities. I'm not thinking of roses (much), as there's not much sun for shrubby kinds and the canopy is too weak to support massive ramblers. Alas. It's not that I haven't weighed the possibilities. I think we're in about the same place in our plans: cleaning up and thinking, and starting the first plants. You're propagating on an ambitious scale compared to my few plants dug up and potted, and I suspect are going to have your woodland garden whipped into shape considerably faster than I am mine. I need to mark my baby oaks; I notice a lot of seedlings coming up, possibly in response to the cleaning up of the past couple of years. I can happily guard the oaks for posterity knowing that I have flowering ashes and maples to enjoy in the present. Silver maples (A. saccharinum) are commonly planted here, too, but with our worthy native field maples (A. campestre) I don't need them, especially since silver maples have no fall color to speak of, while the field maple can turn a good yellow. There are one or two less common local maple species, and one, I believe, colors well in fall (very rare in our native plants): I need to find out which it is, and whether I can get it (A. opalus, I think). I share your admiration for the plane, but it would be out of scale in our woods, which are sadly starved and low-growing. Paula, about the black locust, yes, it's a nitrogen fixer, but it also tends to break and fall and sucker madly. I like my trees to stay put. Since the great locust crash in the spring we've been weeding it out of the entire shade garden, and will be continuing to do so, apparently, for a long time to come. The black locust has considerable merits and is a beautiful tree, but it's not what I want here. You did remind me, though, to add laburnums to my list of possibilities: native, nitrogen fixing, and beautiful in flower. My vision at the moment is actually a modest one: I see a little woodland, with paths and steps, sunlight falling through the trees, a fallen trunk to sit on in the shade. The trees are common and of modest dimensions, such plantings as exist are humble but growing in beauty and variety as the ground becomes richer in humus and is freed of weeds and brush. The mere fact of shade is important: it's been hot and dry here for two months now, and to do down there and sit under the trees is a pleasure and refreshment in itself. Rock outcroppings, moss growing in the cooler parts. Once we get the place cleaned up I may become more ambitious. Oh, last note: I doubt I would consider tulips, which grow well here, because of the boars. Though now that we have wolves I hear their populations are dropping. Perhaps in time we'll achieve some sort of ecological equilibrium. I hope the wolves gobble down large part of our rapidly growing roe deer population as well. Melissa

Image by: Clare_CAMichelia AlbaWhich Shrubs Smell Good? -   Michelia Culture         The following guidelines on Michelia culture were provided by Fredrik Liljeblad in a post to the Fragrant Plants Forum in July 2003.   I wrote this article on Michelias earlier this year.  In it, I go into considerable detail about their culture. FYI: the cultural advice is based on my Coastal San Diego, CA, climate, so you may have to adapt accordingly. I am a great believer in keeping Michelias in large containers, because:   1. They can be moved about in the garden to find the ideal spot 2. Established Michelias resent being moved and suffer setbacks when they are moved 3. Water, soil, and feeding can be more easily controlled 4. If an unexpected frost is due, they can be moved temporarily into outbuildings or under overhanging eaves   My 12' M. alba is in a 20-gallon container and doing very well. If you're potting up, count on the plant spending about 5 years in the same container. To avoid root rot, make sure drainage is excellent--not just good, and mix a handful or two of activated aquarium charcoal into the potting mix to keep soil that the roots haven't yet reached from getting sour; drill extra drainage holes if necessary. If you live in an area with alkaline water (as I do), flush the mineral salts out of the container about every other month (see article). Putting about 2" of pea gravel into the bottom of the container helps drainage and also stabilizes the container in high winds (which Michelias dislike anyway).   My strongest advice is to (at least initially) grow most Michelias in containers for the reasons stated above. M. figo is an exception, but it still needs to be given proper culture and its hardiness limits (see Sunset Western Gardening Book) need to be respected if it's in the ground.   Here's the article:   Haunting Scents of Paradise-The Unforgettable Michelias By Fredrik Liljeblad   If I were exiled to a barren island and allowed to take only one fragrant plant with me, it would be my Michelia alba. With difficulty-perhaps even a tear or two-I'd say good-bye to my collection of gardenias, and I'd sigh as I took a parting sniff of my Chinese jasmine (Jasminum polyanthum), whose trusses of pinkish white flowers permeate every inch of my garden and house with their heady scent each February and March, but my precious Michelia alba, now a 12-foot tall tree, is the one fragrant plant I could never part from.   Michelias are a family of sub-tropical bushes or small trees related to magnolias that produce relatively small but powerfully fragrant flowers. The unique perfume, pungent and fruity, has been likened it to a range of fruits: bananas, pears, apples-even mangoes! The base for "the world's most expensive perfume," Joy, is the essential oil extracted from Michelia alba, commonly known as the "white jade magnolia" or "white champaca"-more on this confusing terminology later on.   My own first encounter with Michelia alba was during Chinese New Year in Taipei in the early 1980s. A Taiwanese friend and his family took me to the Lung Ching Temple in the oldest part of the city on New Year's Day. There we bought teardrop-shaped, waxy-looking ivory flowers with the most incredible perfume I'd ever smelled. Each had a small thread looped through the short stem for hanging on wire racks next to the altar. My friend explained that the scent was so wonderful, it would "rise up to Heaven and get the gods' attention" as we asked them for good fortune in the coming year.   Later, when I lived in Thailand, I'd get up at dawn for my morning walks and buy several bags of Michelia alba buds ("chom-pii" in Thai) from the flower garland sellers outside the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok. When I got back home, I'd float them in bowls so the scent permeated every room in the house. In Java, where M. alba is known as "cempaka putih," the flowers are ritually offered at temple ceremonies to mark holidays, births, or deaths.   After moving to San Diego about 10 years ago, I found myself missing the scent of michelia flowers. As a surrogate, I bought a related variety, M. figo (aka M. falcata), commonly called "banana shrub," on a visit to Tropicworld. As lovely as the fruity scent was while it floated through the house on the warm breezes of March or April, it couldn't replace the almost painfully intense and complex perfume of Michelia alba.   On my trips to an Asian supermarket in KearnyMesa, I would sigh over the $100-plus specimens of M. alba, the costliest of all michelias, on display in the nursery area. Finally, I ran across a specimen at Walter Andersen's. It was mixed in with a group of M. champaca (less expensive than M. Alba), and had been accidentally priced the same as those. When I pointed this out, they insisted on selling it to me as marked (this isn't the only reason Andersen's is my favorite nursery, but it didn't hurt). What a thrill! Today that same tree, now over 12 feet tall and bearing more than 300 flowers each year, grows in an outdoor seating area in my garden where I can enjoy the heady fragrance over morning coffee or during an after-dinner chat with friends.   There are quite a few members of the michelia family, but in American nurseries we commonly find only four, two somewhat hardy varieties: M. doltsopa and M. figo; and two rather tender ones, M. champaca, and M. alba.  All michelias have handsome foliage-sturdy, somewhat waxy, pointed leaves that vary from a light grass green to a medium green. In the hardier varieties, the leaves are held fairly stiffly in the manner of their magnolia "cousins." In the tender ones, the leaves are larger, resembling those of avocados in shape and growth habit, but have far more substance and a lighter, fresher color. They are also very fragrant when crushed, reminiscent of lemon verbena. The flowers of michelias vary slightly in color, and tend to be smallish, long and pointed. In form, they bear a slight resemblance to Magnolia stellata when open, but with a waxy, substantial texture.  M. doltsopa, which comes from the foothills of the Himalayas, becomes a huge tree in its native habitat. Even in California, it's been known to surpass 40 feet. We in San Diego have a specimen at the zoo, and there is also one at the Huntington. M. doltsopa's flowers are fairly large, but are probably the least fragrant of all the michelias. It is a beautiful tree nonetheless.   Michelia figo, the Banana Shrub, can grow to a 15 foot tree, but is usually below 8 feet. Of all the michelias, it has the handsomest branch structure and lends itself to "oriental" effects. The heaviest bloom tends to come in March-April, but some flowers appear throughout the warmer months. The 1-2-inch flowers start as fuzzy, tobacco brown buds, and are a pale banana yellow with knifeblade-thin maroon borders on the petal edges. The plant is appropriately named-the blooms are strongly redolent of banana with a slight apple overtone. There is a U.S. hybrid, M. figo 'Portwine,' whose slightly smaller flowers are entirely maroon.   Of the two rather tender michelias in U.S. commerce, M. champaca, and M. alba, M. champaca is slightly less tender and grows slightly taller than M. alba. It has saffron to pale daylily orange blossoms that are somewhat less fragrant than M. alba, but quite fragrant nonetheless.   As I've mentioned, M. alba is the most powerfully fragrant of all the michelias, with a scent that reverses the proportion of banana to apple found in M. figo, and adds an indefinable "tropical" note as well. It is a handsome tree, somewhat less "architectural" than M. figo, but making up for it in size, profusion of bloom, and length of bloom season. The approx. two-inch long flower buds need some warmth to mature and open, but in practical terms for coastal/coastal strip San Diego gardeners, this means a bloom season that lasts from late March through at least early November or sometimes January, with slightly less production during the May grey/June gloom. Buds, once formed, persist until ready to open, and bud drop is rare.   Despite covering a wide swathe of sub-tropical and tropical Asia, michelias are quite uniform-with the exception of cold tolerance-in their cultural requirements. Some, however, are more unyielding than others. The fact that michelias are related to magnolias is an indicator of their nature: these are surface-rooted, acid-loving, second-story plants that want warmth and a lot of light, but limited direct sun.   Michelia's light requirements are somewhat complex: as much as they like lots of light and warmth, full sun-even at the coast-dries out their leaves and turns them an unpleasant yellowish green. The ideal situation is direct morning sun followed by light dappled shade under high trees. This can translate into any one or a combination of these scenarios: light all-day shade; full sun until late morning with part shade the remainder of the day inland; full sun until early afternoon, then part-shade the rest of the day near the coast. Strong afternoon sun in summer-even at the coast, is not a good situation for michelias.   Michelias also dislike windy locations. Although my garden is near-coastal, it's not at the coast, so the daily prevailing ocean breeze begins about 2:00 p.m. Initially, it took some experimentation on my part to find the proper spot. Until I did, my M. alba was getting rather leathery, netted leaves from the combination of sun and wind. When I moved it under the high, overhanging branches of a White Chinese Mulberry, it perked up enormously. It now gets light all day but little direct sun, and the mulberry also helps baffle the daily ocean breezes-with additional help from my house and a large, vine-covered trellis.   Like magnolias and camellias, michelias have a shallow root system with lots of fine brittle roots. This means that michelias, except perhaps M. doltsopa, are quite amenable to container culture and, in fact, dislike root disturbance as there's some inevitable damage to the brittle roots. At least until you've found the perfect location, I favor keeping michelias in containers since it enables you to move them about the garden. The potting mix I personally like is leafmold, osmunda fiber (orchid mix is OK), perlite, azalea/camellia-type potting soil, composted pine needles, and horticultural coconut coir (coir poses far less danger from overwatering than water-retentive peat moss).   Mulch michelias with leafmold mixed with their own dropped leaves (michelias shed some leaves all year long, but especially in the spring when the new leaves emerge). In watering terms, you can't go wrong if you mimic camellia culture, keeping in mind that michelias' foliage is not as stiff and transpiration resistant. I personally water somewhat lavishly since the above mix drains so well, but if in doubt, root rot is a greater danger-especially during the winter months and the May grey/June gloom periods. On the other hand, all michelias, particularly M. alba and M. champaca, like even more humidity than camellias. Spray or mist the foliage in early morning, and several times a day during a Santa Ana.   Also, because our water here has so much mineral salts, I use drip irrigation for 12 hours once a month to leach out all the salts. Without leaching, you run the risk of some marginal leaf burn.   Unlike camellias, michelias are greedy feeders. I give mine a varied diet: the basis is usually Safer brand liquid plant food for Azaleas, Rhododendrons, and Camellias, but MiracleGro for acid-loving plants works almost as well if you leach. I start in the spring with Peter's 20-20-20. From May to October, I alternate acid-loving plant food with Superbloom to encourage flower production. Because our local water is so alkaline, I also give a dose of Safer's IronPlus 5% about four to six times a year, usually right after leaching. If the leaves start to look a yellowish green (they're never much darker than a light grass or apple green anyway), I may give a 1/2-strength foliar feeding of iron in between regular doses. I usually don't fertilize from late October/early November until the end of February, just in case we actually do approach a freeze.   You will notice that michelia buds usually form among the leaves rather than at the tips of the branches. Especially as they get ready to open, they become very brittle and snap off easily, so be careful when touching the tree. Unlike camellias, michelias seldom drop buds unless the plants are very stressed. If underfed, however, bud production will decrease considerably. Buds on M. champaca and M. alba will often just sit there waiting for warmer weather, so don't be alarmed. Michelias can hold on to their unopened buds for a long time before they open. Incidentally, if you're in a dry area, try to mist the air frequently during the hottest part of the day. Michelias like warmth, but they also like some humidity.   With the exception of M. figo, most michelias tend to produce very vertical growth. If you're buying a M. alba or M. champaca, try to choose one that displays at least some tendency to produce horizontal growth. Pruning is not the answer, but rigorous tip-pinching of the uppermost leaves will force side growth. One problem many michelia owners encounter is distinguishing the leaf buds from the flower buds in the early stages. There's no substitute for carefully observing your plant, but here are some things to watch for: flower buds maintain their bulletlike shape; leaf buds, past a certain point, develop pointy "tails" reminiscent of green beans, but with a slight twist to them. A bud at the very end of a branch tends to be a leaf bud, as most flower buds emerge from existing leaf axils.   Despite all the above, michelias are not difficult to grow here, they just require an understanding of their needs. Given that, they will reward you with that haunting scent for most of each year.   Some good local [i.e., San Diego, CA] sources for michelias are Walter Andersen's, Pacific Tree Farms, and Mission Hills Nursery.