Hi Tess, those varieties sound good....esp. Liberty, Spartan, William's Pride....you definitely want scab resistant apples. As for your arborist, he is half-right in that it is undesireable to protect the whole pear tree (probably) but individual pears can be protected next year.....we talk about bagging fruit on this forum and you should learn more about that......as for age of pears, the Fowler Pear tree by the Mukilteo landing north of Seattle has a Seckel pear tree planted in 1862 and still producing and if you come to our Harvest Fest in Carkeek Park you can see 120 year old apple and pear trees www.pipersorchard.org......final note: since I "advertise" this gardenweb.com website for growers that ask questions , perhaps I can advertise the www.homeorchardsociety.org website for people with questions in the Pacific Northwest.

Now that you mentioned it, have you checked (or heard of) Glenn or Glen Walters Nursery in Oregon? I tried to check them out some time ago and they appeared to be a large wholesaler but I could not research them in terms of their camellia selection. Have you heard of them? Do you know anything about their camellia inventory? I remember them because of their website. I have a broadband connection for the Internet but it was so sloooow downloading files that it sort-of stopped/froze after I downloaded about 20% of the catalog file! Gave up! I know they know it is slow because they let you link up to their catalog two ways. They provide a link to the whole catalog as a single file. They also divide their catalog into multiple pdf files alphabetically. For example, (and just a bad example, mind you) PDF File I contained plants with the letters A-B, File II was C-D and File III was the rest. There may have been 3-5 files, I do not recall exactly. I know that I selected the first one which contained camellias and it was like watching paint dry.... Tried several times and finally gave up and never returned to the website. I did remain curious... They need or they needed less graphics in those files and more computer horsepower. Most camellia vendors are clustered in the Southeast, Nuccio's Nursery in Altadena California being an exception. I have always been puzzled about that since the NW contains a few good nurseries and wholesaler of azaleas and rhododendrons. They are also closer to China and Japan, source of many camellia varieties not easily found here.

Hi will, Thanks for the kind words. I love conifers and am still learning. I hope more people find out just how great they are and for the most part very low maintance. Also maybe once people see your garden in the westsound home and garden magazine they will like them even more. I know you are humble and wont brag about yourself so I will. Also thanks for your knowledge on cool conifer. I might call some of the great plants coming next years and Will's hot picks. I know I don't write on here very much but I do read the article always with a pen in hand to write down great plants. Thanks all for sharing and hope to see you if you are local or a conifer nerd.

Let me try to clarify a bit. There are three Western sessile Trillium which are or can be white. Trillium chloropetalum, T. albidum and T. parviflorum. According to "Trilliums" by Frederick W. Case Jr. and Roberta B. Case, the range of Trillium chloropetalum (sessile and can be white) is the central California coast region. Fruit purple. Flower petals 35-65mm = 1.38"-2.6". The USDA plants website has the range for chloropetalum into northern California but not into Oregon. Albidum - sessile and most often white - range (Case)central California north to central Oregon. USDA - Central California up through Oregon and into Clark County Washington. Case notes that where cloropetalum and albidum overlap there has been hybridizing. Fruit of albidum is green or purplish-green (Case). Flower petals 48-78mm = 1.88"-3.07" quite large. Parviflorum (Victor G. Soukup)- sessile creamy white, occassionally purple stained range NW Oregon north into Pierce & Thurston counties in Washington. USDA has the range only in Washington. Fruit is dark-red purple or maroon. Flower petals are 30-40mm = 1.18"-1.57" (considerably smaller than albidum but not 1/4-1/3 of an inch) Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast incorrectly lists the Washington sessile Trillium as chloropetalum. I was told they should fix it in the new revision. Guess I'll have to track down a copy and check. Susan Farmer has been doing DNA research on Trilliaceae. She has a wealth of information on her website. Thank you. Julie Here is a link that might be useful: Susan Farmer Trillium site