You should know soon whether you like those berries or not. I live next to an abandoned yard that now has several hundred sq ft of berry bramble adjacent to our yard, a shared CL fence. The only problem I have with them is that you can't have just a little. This kind of vine will grow under the soil for various and arbitrary lengths, then pop up, in the lawn, in a shrub, wherever. Mowing isn't necessarily enough to keep it in bounds, little pieces can survive enough to send shoots farther out, until it finds somewhere where it's not being mowed. It's quite different from a ground-cover type plant that creeps out in a visible, widening circle, because of the impossibility of knowing where it's gone, invisibly. Having any in close proximity greatly increases your chances for seedlings. Those are easy to pull, but regular monitoring is necessary to ensure you find them while the whole thing will still come up. Gardenia should have the main bloom soon, shouldn't impede your access to the berries and the vines look like they are using it for support. I might recommend enjoying the flowers, likely on while you pick berries, then addressing each plant as you see fit. I know nothing about store-bought raspberry plants, my comments are not in regard to them at all.

Thank you, Jeanne. I do remember growing Solidago last year but my notes were not up-to-date - failed to say where I planted them, but this would be about right. And your description of the weed and how it grows reminds me of an 'unknown' I grew to adulthood in my garden last year, and did not realize it was a weed until it flowered. Must remember the look for next year. Now the nettle ID really is scary. I have not had nettle in my garden until about 15 years ago when it came with a load of soil, ut we got rid of it back then. In addition, these seedlings are in one spot like something dropped them there. Do nettle seedlings not have stinging powers? I have handled at least 8 of these seedlings, transplanting them into cell packs with my bare hands with no ill effects. At first the leaves (cotyledons) were more round, then took on this spear shape. I'll see if anyone has other ideas. You identifiers are all amazing!!!

I would get one of those soil kits that tests for too much nitrogen and determine if somehow you are accumulating too much fertilizer where that non-bloomer is located. Sometimes lawn fertilizer, combined with the hydrangea's fertilizer combine and become too much so you get no blooms. As we get into Spring 2012, I would check if the shrubs are developing any flower buds or if the flower buds are developed and then are being eaten. So observe if pests like to congregate there... pests like deer, squirrels, etc congregate. They could be eating all of your flower buds. However, I would expect them to also munch on the other two NB. So I am not sure if this is THE cause but it is worth checking anyways. If you are not getting any flower buds then you may have an environmental problem. It is too cold and the buds dry out, for example. Or it is too dry during the Fall and-or Winter and the plant aborts the flower buds. NB should be hardy on your zone 6 so I would check if this one gets less water.... say because the sprinkler waters the other two fine but does not reach well enough to this one NB. Dense shade can be a problem too but if all three were in dense shade, I would expect them all to be affected. Just wondering, have you ever had a formal soil test done?

Annabelle will bud on old wood here, so it should for you also. I think it's bud hardy to zone 3, so your new plants could be H. arborescens. And no need to prune Annabelle unless you want to other than to remove dead wood. I find it stays more upright with older wood left on, and it has many more, but slightly smaller flowers when unpruned. Mine is where snow comes off the roof, and in rough years branches get broken or the voles eat all the bark off the buried stems, so in those years I hard prune. If the stems look good coming out of winter, I don't. Nikko Blue probably won't ever bloom for you (bud kill), so I wouldn't bother. I'd be likely to spend a bit more and get a type of H. paniculata that is a bit more interesting than Pee Gee. There has been a lot of breeding in the last 10-15 years, and there's now a range of flower form and color (actually how long they stay in each of the 3 colors - lime, white, and pink - that they all pass through) as well as plant size. Pee Gee isn't a bad plant, but it is large and the flowers are much smaller than for many of them. I haven't had good luck with WM plants the very few times I've bought them, so I am far more likely to buy small starts mail order with a plant like H. paniculata that grows fast.