Spider plants rooted Mums Purple geraniums Iris pseudacorus Anything just about: Iris would like named,Hosta,Daylily's,Lilys,Clematis,Phlox,Roses,woodlands,Bulbs,Herbs for a zone 4 garden.Iris Tempt me can go out tomorrow

Interested in the elderberry, I checked your list and I am also interested in buckwheat (edible type), Canby raspberry, heirloom anasazi (corn?), sesame, hyacinth beans. I have blackberry plants, Passiflora incarnata (maypop), lemon trees, perennial chocolate scented sunflowers (Helianthus tuberosus)(edible tubers) aka Jerusalem artichokes. prickly pear cactus, moon and stars watermelon seeds.

We've been here 9 years now, a duplex in a historical monument made from homes built for shipworkers in WWII, on landfill in San Francisco Bay. The same family had lived there for the entire time and the father grew a few yellow roses when he lived. When we got there it was 18 inches of clay covered grass. We simply dug holes to begin with and I interred my first 20 hybrid teas. Second thought, we built 8 inch high raised beds, spread them with every delicay and plowed them into the clay which the roses liked. I discovered own roots and ogrs about the same time. Over the last 9 years roses have been added, subtracted, different companion plants and CA natives added, gophers run off, hundreds of lady bugs added, thrip eating nematodoes, bird baths etc. I hardly spray a thing anymore. Plants that can't take it are gone. The high qulity prepared mulch that I buy and add by the yard, twice a year has made the soil delicious. It is my only fertilizer and the roses love it. The garden has become a living entity. The husband has become a loving gardener although some points of view are still at odds. Now we live in it. People walk by and tell me how beautiful it is and then murmer "so much work." Ya gotta do something in your life, growing beautiful flowers causes enough pleasure to be worthwhile. I love it more and more as the plants grow big, hummingbirds come to approve each time I water, the bees gently drone and the lady bugs seem to agree to eat all the aphids. I don't know what will happen to it when I go but for now it is a celebration and a testimonial to what roses do well in this part of northern CA. You have explained the process very well. Gotta go plant another geranium--they go with roses here. la

It sounds like you're planning a really nice late winter garden! It's such a boost to have these flowers just when you think winter will never end. My AP usually starts blooming in February, and the only other flowers I've got at that time are hellebores and heath. I grow scilla, galanthus, and chionodoxa, and love them - they will naturalize and give you a great river of color over time, but I'd be surprised if they bloom as early as the hamamelis - AP is the earliest witch hazel in my garden. It will still be showing color when my woodland bulbs start blooming, but if I were going to pair AP with something other than heath I guess I'd go with helleborus foetidus (stinking hellebore) or h. niger (Christmas rose). They'd like similar conditions except less acidic soil, but because lime doesn't travel laterally in the soil, it's easy to accommodate this difference. (Planting the hellebores closer to a concrete sidewalk works for this too, the ph is quite different there from a few feet into a bed.) Anyway, the bulbs will be spectacular, and you're smart to buy plenty of each since that will give you something to look at really quickly. Within a few years you can transplant any extras to other parts of the garden - they take essentially no space and play well with all types of other plants. I'd try not to mix the bulbs up too much when planting, but to create drifts of one type running informally along different sections of the bed. A solid blue mat of scilla, for example, has more appeal (to me, anyway!) than the spotty effect of a few of each type mixed together. (My 2 cents!)