There is a little problem with the term Den. Phal in that all it refers to is the shape of the flowers. Culture varies according to the ancestry. That is why a name is useful. All you can do if it is a NOID is to follow some general rules. Just a little drier and slightly cooler in winter. Most of the ancestors come from monsoonal climates where it is warm, wet and humid in "summer". Drier but not bone dry, and slightly cooler but still warm in winter. See if you can find some complete Hard-cane Dendrobium Notes written for NE USA.

I don't think roses on Fortuniana can go dormant. I've growns (and continue to grow) both R. x fortuniana and four or five roses on fortuniana. From it's parent R. laevigata, fortuniana gets genes that make it grow through winter and to set bloom very early in spring. Remember that where it comes from, winter is not what we know as winter...it's just shorter daylight. Fortuniana roots keep pushing nutrients and wanting to grow into the above ground parts, whether they are fortuniana or something else put on by grafting or budding. Jimmy Moser out in warm, warm Memphis years ago wrote about overwintering his roses on fort...in plywood boxes that fit over his roses. That said, you need to grow a rose on fort in conditions where it never slows down. It's both eyeopening and a bit depressing because never will you and I get growth like that, short of moving way far south with the flying cockroaches and fire ants and buckmoth caterpillers and chilli thrips and need to air conditions six to eight months of the year. WIth two decades in Houston and NOLA, I say that without wistfullness.

Campanula -- I think the defoliating is a Florida/California thing. Since we don't really have winter, the plants tend to keep virtually all of their leaves from last season. I like to remove them to tell the plant spring is coming, as well as to dramatically reduce the number of black spot spores in the garden. It is indeed labor-intensive, but if we can do it, we like to. Pillars are an interesting way to grow a columnar rose. It works especially well with roses like 'Don Juan' that tend to make a few very stiffly upright canes that resist bending. And yes, if you don't trim such a rose properly, you get a bunch of flowers on the top. It is through the creation of many cut stems all along the length of the pillar that we get even bloom throughout the height. I'm trying to think where, near Cambridge, you could have a good look at some pillars. I'm fairly sure I've seen some at Peter Beales' Nursery. Don't recall seeing any at Mannington Hall. I'll put a link here to a 'Don Juan' in the FSC garden -- I'm a bit hesitant to do that, because it was not at that point ideally trained to the pillar, so it's not a great example. Still, you can get an idea from it. Malcolm

Hmm. The temps mentioned don't help much. A typical summer day here will get into the mid 70's. 50 is a common night time temp. Sometimes we get a 'heat wave' where the temps get into the upper 80's for a week, and there is a run on fans at the the box stores. Comparisons: We traditionally put out bedding plants on the May long weekend which in Canada is the third Sunday in May. This year we had killing frosts until June. We have had snow in August, but that is a fluke. But 2 inches of non-sticking snow in September happens every few years. The poplar change colour typically in mid September. And 15 September is the average panic-day-the-garden-is-going-to-freeze. HOWEVER, going through my photo library. 2004: 4" of snow on the ground by 22 October. 2008: Leaves starting to change by 10 September, then we had a very long Indian summer. I was watering until November, it got very cold for a week, then I had to fire up the irrigation system one more time in December. On the average first snowfall that sticks is early November. Typically the pond freezes over a couple weeks later than that. But we have had -10F temperatures for Halloween. Generally all our conifers are finished with active growth by early August. Needles may get fuller, but they won't grow. To Ken: The trees I want to move are 4-6 feet tall. I moved about 150 this spring, selling most of them and planting the ones where the root ball fell apart on my own farm. Of those 15, 13 survived and are nicely green, although as I expected they didn't grow much. (Busy putting out roots.) My followups on the ones I sold say that they have done well. (I offer replacement if any fail.) I dig by hand. A 4' tree gets a 16" root disk. About 30-40 lbs. A 6' tree gets a 20" disk -- about 80 lbs. (Spruce don't seem to have roots deeper than about 4-5 inches.) My rule for spring is that I can start digging when the ground thaws, and I stop when the buds are beginning to swell, and that they should be in the ground in their new home by the time the papers start to fall off the tips. I'm trying to come up with a set of guidelines for fall. At this point my best guess for balance is to start digging after the first killing frost, and to have them in the ground by the 2nd weekend in October. That will typically give them 3-4 weeks of warm days (60's) cool nights (30's) Ground, especially if I mulch, won't freeze until November. Follow that up with a liberal application of snow with the snowblower?