I got a new raised bed this year courtesy of DS and DH and planted Abraham Darby, Eden and Graham Thomas to grow along a fence. It was fun dividing and planting annuals and I had two roses growing in pots that are going to get their last reprieve in that bed.....Angel Face and Heaven on Earth. I am eager to see how these do. My other plans are to complete my knockout bed. I have rainbow, blushing and pink, but the original knockout came dead from Edmunds and although I tried rooting one, I failed. So I need to find another knockout to put in that space. Other than that, I just want to keep up on my weeding and mulching. I still need to roundup the driveway and fencelines and spray the blackberries. I need a windless rainless day for that, and so far, there haven't been any. Good luck with your plans everyone. K

Silene is WONDERFUL! I've never met another seed that germinates as easily and grows so quickly into a flowering plant. I wanted a lot of it this year so a few weeks ago I filled a black flat with drainage holes with promix, sprinkled on lot of seed on top, watered it in and now it looks like a fuzzy doormat of seedlings! I think every seed germinated. I am going to spread chunks around the beds thsi coming weekend. Nancy

Oh, boy! I've been sick and coming back and reading this is like...well, like a mandate to go to the nusery! Most of you guys have warmer gardens than me, but these still have to be plants that'll show up early here too. Nippersdad, this is my first year with Edgeworthia. My friends all went crazy over it some time ago, but I looked at those silly flower-on-stick blooms and, as much as I love fragrance and winter bloom, decided to pass. Then I saw a mature plant all leafed out in another garden, and wow! The foliage is lush, even a bit on the tropical side, and it makes a very handsome plant for a position you'll be passing by a lot. Not so in winter, but then you get to spend the whole fall and early winter watching and waiting as those buds swell, so it is really a prize. That's very valuable information about daphne, Steve, and I'm writing it down to remember. It's still on my must-have-someday list so I haven't managed to kill it yet. What a great trip, Razorback. I love the Tama types but they sold out during a trip I made with friends to Fort Valley before I could grab one. Speaking of wanting more room, I used to live about 15 minutes from Descanso Gardens and 20 from Nuccio's Nursery, but my entire garden, carved out of the side of a mountain, totaled about 4000 square feet. I had 5 camellias in the shady back. Candytuft's always been on the list, Mk87, but it suddenly jumped up big time on the tidy groundcover list I'm trying to put together. I have so much dirt to cover and am already seeing that vining groundcovers are going to be a major hassel to control in large spaces. Thank you. A plant that's doing very nicely in my garden is lime thyme. Lemon thyme kept dying back after a while, but lime thyme's looking very pretty and fresh out there right now. If rodents (I assume) hadn't eaten my little species tulips, they would have been a wonderful picture. I'll be trying again. I don't mind all the learning experiences so much, it's that they take soooo long! I'm afraid of what another of these cycles is going to do, even though I have no winter-flowering camellias yet (it's so cold here I have to stick with winter-hardy, with maybe a couple of my favorites tucked against the house. What a difference these warm temperatures made since my post on New Year's Day, though. My tiny Osmanthus delavayi now has tiny buds at each leaf joint, so it will bloom after all, and both witch hazels, virginiana and Primavera, are opening flowers I thought had been killed by that early cold. These are my first from them, and I was thrilled to find their fragrances lovely and easy to discern from even one open flower (turns out they start blooming from the bottom, so I'm on my knees in the mud checking them out). Also looking very nice out there is Lavandula stoechas, Spanish lavender. The label's gone (do birds fly off with them?), so I don't know what cultivar, if any, but it's a very handsome tidy mound of a pretty pale green-blue-gray. And has a wonderful fragrance when you brush your hand over in passing or pinch off a piece to carry along. It's not in an especially dry or well-draining spot but doesn't seem to have been bothered by the rains so far. My husband needs me. A window just blew out of his workshop.

That is absolutely beautiful! What a wonderful job your MGs have done in building that garden. And the video is beautiful, too. Thanks for sharing with us. (I've passed it on to our coordinator.) I have to ask... what are the lengths of garden hose for? Sandy