I'm trying the newspaper layers (6-8 pages thick) topped with a thick layer of the free wood chippings I get from our city compost site. This is a SW corner of my yard where arborists cleared some trash trees/shrubs out between the lilac hedge and a small grove of conifers. There was a leggy honeysuckle and even leggier spirea left in the gap both of which I hard pruned to hopefully rejuvenate them. And I'd like to eventually get a couple of other things in there to flesh it out. I've always liked weeding - especially where the weeds are big and having them gone is really noticeable. I use a short handled spade, dig down and lever out the weeds. It is labor intensive, but once into it, you'd be suprised how much ground you can clear. Once I got out the major weeds in this corner, I scuffle hoed up the little weedlings and will see if the newspaper and wood chips suppress them for good. It looks nice anyway! I would think for layering to be successful, you should at least cut down the big weeds as close to ground level as possible - good green additions to a compost pile.

Wow, that's a lot of plants! I don't have a list of what I'm growing in my little gardens -- sometimes it takes me a couple of weeks in the spring to realize that that weird looking weed in the corner is something I've had for years. I just assume that more plants than not will grow in this area! One of the more unusual plants I grow is agapanthus. Not a particularly hardy variety, this was simply a florists' plant my mother gave me four years ago. But it's come up reliably every year for the past three seasons in Central Ohio. It's planted against a south-facing brick wall with excellent drainage, and apparently doesn't realize it's not in zone 8+ anymore! One of my mother's more spectacular plants is a 15 year old calamondin orange that arrived as a little "get-well" houseplant. It spends the winter on the unheated glassed in back porch in Cincinnati, and now stands over 6' tall in the pot, and is nearly 4' around. It always has flowers and fruit on it, and we've picked 200 ripe fruits at one time.

Hi Rhoni Ann, Lots of people are painting red/orangey-red brick homes nowadays. If you're a fan of the Fixer-Upper TV show on HGTV, you've probably noticed that Chip and Joanna Gaines have totally transformed the exterior of many brick homes by painting that red/red-orange brick in all sorts of lovely shades of gray, creamy white or beige. After they add new trim and sometimes shutters and window boxes (depending on the style of the home and the look they're going for), along with new landscaping, those homes look just as transformed on the exterior as they are on the interior. Keep in mind that once you paint your brick, assuming you are going with a lighter color, it will reflect heat and light, but I have found there are lots of plants which grow well on the hotter west and south sides of homes that what a person might expect. First of all, if you will amend your clay with compost or some other organic material before you plant, then your plants will do so much better that it will blow your mind and you won't have to water nearly as much. We have dense, thick red clay (the kind you could use to make clay pots) that had zero organic matter when I tested it when we moved here in 1999. When they dug the holes for our percolation test for our septic system when we built our house, most all of the water remained in the holes after 24-hours, which explains why we have a lagoon instead of leach lines. Along our south and west facing walls, cannas have done really well in only lightly amended clay. If you plant the tall ones that get 4-7' tall, they will form their own mini-wall along the bring wall, and they don't really mind the heat as long as you water them occasionally in summer. They die back in winter, but you can cut off the ugly dead foliage at the ground so you don't have to look at it all winter long. Cannas are very strong, resilient plants, fitting into my favorite category of plants that I describe in this manner: they won't die and you can't kill them. In front of those taller cannas, you could the short, compact evergreen shrubs of your choice so you'd have something green there year-round. Some of the shorter varieties of hollies would work, and hollies come with many different leaf shapes from the very small leaves of yaupon hollies to the larger leaves of other forms of holly. If you don't want evergreen shrubs on the west side of the house, you could plant daylilies, lantana, gomprena (aka globe amaranth), zinnias, cosmos and some perennial members of the salvia family. All of these do well in well-amended, well-draining soil and only need moderate amounts of water in summer as long as they are well mulched. Or, you could plant ground cover type plants that thrive in full sun. Purple wintercreeper is a lovely greenish groundcover that is low maintenance. We just cut ours back to the ground with the string trimmer once or twice a year. It turns purplish-green in the cold season. Its flowers are not very obvious but then they give you lovely little berries. Hollies, by the way, are one of my favorite plants for clay soil because once they are established many of them are really drought-tolerant as well as heat-tolerant. If you like crape myrtles they are very heat-tolerant and come in all sorts of sizes, from more tree-like forms that can attain 20-40' Crape Myrtle Trails--Varietiesin height to weeping forms only a couple of feet tall. Be sure to purchase named crape myrtles varieties so you can Google those varieties before you buy to ensure you're getting the right size for your area. Sometimes the ones sold at places like Wal-Mart don't give a variety name on the tag, so you have no idea what you're getting. There's nothing worse than planting a big variety of crape myrtle in an area that is only appropriate for a small to medium sized one because you'll spend tons of time trying to prune back the big one to keep it small enough. Depending on the color you ultimately choose to paint your brick, you might like some of the Black Diamond series of crape myrtles with their purplish-black foliage. They would look striking against a lighter colored wall and they don't get too large. To give you an idea of the many kinds of crape myrtles available, I'm going to link the page of the Crape Myrtle Trails of McKinney, TX, which is my favorite website for Crape Myrtle information. I haven't tried Rose of Sharon on the west side of the house, but it probably would be alright. I have several kinds of hardy hibiscus in the border around our large veggie garden and they are both heat tolerant and drought tolerant. They are growing in heavily amended clay in raised beds, but there's a couple of smaller ones at the lower north end of our heavily sloping garden and they are equally heat and drought tolerant, growing at grade level in soil only lightly amended. Another perennial flower (often considered a reseeding annual, but perennial in my garden) that doesn't mind the west side of a building is tall verbena, Verbena bonariensis. It is one of the most heat-tolerant and drought-tolerant plants I've ever grown and is a real butterfly magnet. I use lots of autumn sage (Salvia greggii) plants as they tolerate heat and plentiful sunshine. They are perennials and are semi-evergreen. Sometimes they bloom on and off throughout the winter here in zone 7b. I just shear them back pretty hard right before new growth begins in early Spring to keep them more compact and more manageable. There's tons of options for the west side of a house. Just avoid things like hydrangeas that must have afternoon shade in our climate and avoid plants that need perfect drainage. Good luck, and if you have more questions, I hope you'll ask them. Also, watch for the Master Gardener's plant sale in your county, which has a very active MG group that puts on a great plant sale in the Spring. This year's plant sale is May 11th. More info about it can be found on the website linked below. Pottawatomie County Extension Service Webpage The Master Gardeners have a display garden at the ag extension building and you might visit it to get some ideas. Dawn

SUBSTITUTIONS AND DUPLICATES OKAY I'm not picky! Surprises are great just no ornamentals please BEANS (anything pretty! except scarlet emperor I have lots of him) Blauhilde Purple Koronis Nonna Agnes's Blue Bean Fort Portal Jade Bean Dragon Tongue Red Swan Sunset Runner Painted Lady Runner Good Mother Stallard PEAS! Any rare, heirloom, or odd colored varieties Carouby De Maussane Spring Blush Tendril Blue Pod Capucijner Tall Telephone Arbogast Magnum Bonum Prince Albert Lincoln Champion of England Sugar Magnolia SQUASH (any bush types) Bush Buttercup Desi Summer Squash Galeux d'Eysines Kakai Kogigu Lakota Marina di Chioggia Moranga Musquee de Provence Sibley/Pikes Peak Sucrine du Berry Sweet Dumpling Tatume Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Triamble/Shamrock MELONS Ali Baba Watermelon Crane Early Frame Prescott Ginger's Pride Ineya Old Time Tennessee Piel de Sapo Strawberry Watermelon Swan Lake Tip Top Valencia Winter Melon Vert Grimpant TOMATOES African Queen Aunt Ruby's German Green Aunt Ginny's Purple Aunt Gertie's Gold Believe it or not Big Ben Big Rainbow Black Russian Blondkopfchen Brandywine Yellow Burpee's Globe Ceylon Chile Verde Elfin Emerald Evergreen Gold Medal Goldman's Italian-American Green Doctors Green Giant Jaune Flammee Marvel Striped Mary Robinson's German Bicolor Matt's Wild Cherry McClintock's Big Pink Mortgage Lifter bicolor Old Ivory Egg Opalka Orange Banana Orange Strawberry Orange Minsk Peach Blow Sutton Purple Russian Red Rose Santa Clara Canner Sara's Galapagos Stump of the World Stupice White Beauty Wild Sweetie MISC. All kinds of radishes (the more colorful the better!) Carrots - Atomic Red, Black Nebula, Black Spanish, Chantenay, Gniff, Koral, Oxheart, Scarlet Nantes, St Valery Ramps, Wild Leeks Nodding Onion (Allium cernuum) Egyptian Walking Onion Ground Cherry - Aunt Molly's, Goldie Goji Berry (scarlet wolfberry) Wild Strawberry (fragaria vesca) FLOWERS Papaver somniferum - Pepperbox, Black Swan, Danish Flag, Drama Queen, Igor, Hens and Chicks, Hungarian Blue, Fire and Snow, Giganteum Calendula - Kablouna, Oopsy Daisy, Solar Flashback, Pink Surprise, any apricot colored Dianthus plumarius (ANY) Echinacea purpurea - ANY PURPLES, Bravado, Fatal Attraction, Pink Poodle, Ruby Star Orange Honeysuckle (Lonicera Ciliosa) Pink Honeysuckle (Lonicera Hispidula) Rose (Rosa rugosa) Sunflowers - Chianti, Greenburst, Ikarus, Jade, Jolly Joker, Taiyo, Titan Wild Violets (Viola Sempervirens, Viola Adunca, Viola Glabella) Zinnias - Cherry & Ivory Swizzle, Tudor NASTURTIUM - ANY except mixes, Apricot Trifle, Cherries Jubilee, Copper Sunset, Creamsicle, Double Delight Apricot, Evelyn, Hermine Grashof, Margaret Long, Moonlight, Vesuvius, Yeti, Ladybird Cream Purple Spot HERBS Orange Thyme (thymus fragrantissimus) Culinary Sage - Berggarten Variegated, Broad leafed Sage White Sage (salvia apiana) Basil - Tulsi, Lime, Lettuce Leaf, Purple types Lavender - Hidcote, Munstead, Ellagance Pineapple mint Ashwagandha Soapwort Lemon Verbena Sorrel Lovage Salad Burnet Mizuna