whaas, I am about 40 miles SW of Rockford. Last map I looked at had us right on the edge, but I think they may have adjusted the zone map fairly recently? jth, you may be right about the botrytis. I still haven't unpotted the thing to look, but it is drastically worse today. I guess my friend took it up with Bailey's and they are probably going to get a credit for all the plants they bought. None of them look good. I have seen a lot of botrytis on the roses this year. It has been warm/cold/hot/warm/cold but not particularly wet. I might never know.

I agree and thanks guys for pointing me in the right direction, I really like the curves compared to my straight lines on the dog bone bed. The curves on the bed connecting the arbor will make my picea pungens 'hoopsii' and Picea glauca 'pendula' really pop! I like this much more than the round circle I had before that made these trees blend in. Dave perhaps this fall I will take measurements off my yard and work on this over winter. Right now I just want to get a basic scetch of what I think could look good. I won't be putting these beds in until fall 2012. Tonight I'll lay the roundup down for the arbor bed, mark the spot for the plants, etc to get it ready to plant in 6 weeks pending weather. A garden hose is definitely easier to use and lay out curves, I just use rope because the beds are very large. Just an example, the bed I have to the right of my house, I have about 400' of rope down to create this bed. The cost of rope is much less than the cost of hose. When I add those 3 beds to the back yard I'll lay out all 3 beds at once just to make sure I really like it. If I do one bed at a time with my water hose, I may not like the overall design once all 3 beds are in place. What looks great on paper could look bad in person and vise versa. I use 1/2 pink hose, it shows up pretty good and I can easily see the layout from the second story window. I took your design and modified the middle bed to force the design to stay out in the yard and not so close to the house. I couldn't have it wrap around the kidney bed like you have it only because it would have put the small bed to the far right of your scetch in the back deck. With this design, I should have around 20' of space. I may or may not make the middle bed arch out on the other side a little instead of a half circle. It'll depend on how much room I'll have.

I was responding to this comment: OTOH it's native range appears to be quite small, and in my experience this always negatively impacts a species adaptability Yes, we knew that! I still stand by what I said, at least in a relative sense and applying to products of a certain kind of speciation. If you consider something like dawn redwood, sure, it was somehow "chased" into a small remote area - probably by humans among other factors - and is now surprisingly adaptable as I'm always pointing out. Found in an area that is probably zn 8a but was hardy to 5b. But if you've spent several hours looking at the huge 2 volume manual of Chinese flora -I forget the name of it but I'm sure you will know what I'm talking about - you see the pattern I'm talking about in the hundreds of range maps. There are things that undergo speciation in a small area and are really only used to conditions in that small area. Take the Chinese plants known to be practically indestructible. Something like Paulownia. They grow all over China. Just as Picea abies grows "all over" Europe, within reason. The few plants from China considered hard to grow usually have very small distributions. (obviously, adjusting for the factor of hardiness in that consideration) It's not a 100% correlation, but it's a noticeable trend. There are _reasons_ they can currently be in a small area, besides the ones you mentioned. And even if they are the ones you mentioned, it could relate to their adaptability. Maybe Picea omorika isn't able to spread much because it cannot compete with Picea abies to the north and some other conifer to the south, but the fact of that indicates that something about its physiology is not up to snuff compared to those species. I will admit I should have said: my experience this OFTEN negatively impacts a species adaptability

i was going to recommend you track down the annual growth rate.. and then do the math.. but you already did .... i think you have your answer .... the problem i found.. when trying to collect the newer stuff.. well .. frankly .. i bet ... odds are ..... nobodies had it for 25 to 30 years .... of course.. now that i said it... just you wait and see ... lol ... one thing i will note ... iseli's most likely near year around growth .. will probably be a bit more that your 4 months of frozen ground z4 ... or z5 ... one would expect .. one a tree that basically has one growth spurt per year ... that it wouldnt matter .. since most of such will happen in spring .... but i think i have observed that it can .. in a minor way ... be slower for us.. in the great white frozen north ... it would be interesting ... with that name ... if any of our European friends might actually have a longer history with the plant ... one trick i have to seeing the future... is to use the proper full latin name .... and then take it to google images ...and when looking at those pix.. compare the new leader growth.. with the lateral annual growth ... as best you can.. to try to intuit what you can out of it .... yeah i know.. more a stream of consciousness than a good answer.. lol.... i tried ... ken https://www.google.com/search?q=Picea+omorika+%E2%80%98Silberblue%E2%80%99&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj9seO2jLLZAhUDbK0KHbiIB6YQ_AUICigB&biw=868&bih=716#imgrc=_