Creeping raspberry, rubus calcynoides, is a great trailing plant choice for shade or sun. It's not an edible raspberry, nor does it have a showy flower, but it is tough, and will drape nicely. My favorite shade planter combo is Japanese Painted Fern, (Athyrium nipponicum Pictum) plus a purple heuchera, and creeping raspberry to trail. The leaf textures complement each other. In zone 7, all of these are perennial, so even better the second year. You could tuck in the impatiens for flower...would suggest white or light pink to go with the purple theme .

Good morning everyone! Thanks so much for your wonderful comments and observations. I really appreciate being able to share this with a group who gets itÂ. Last weekend we had 30 people at DougÂs party here and there were only a handful who looked at the gardens. Like Sue, Tom, Monique and Les and theyÂd seen them a couple weeks ago. LOL Someone asked if the Fuchsia ÂLena was a bleeding heart. SighÂ. Anyway, most times I garden in a vacuum except for what I share here so the feedback and input is very much appreciated. Kathy, thanks for the possible ID on that fuchsia. I agree, it looks very much like WC. And interestingly I thought it looked upright and the newer growth is but when it starts blooming the weight of those large flowers pulls the stems down so that it trails. IÂve been thinking of making a standard out of it. It really is a blooming fool and takes full sun here in NH. Love to see a photo of yours. Michelle, Definitely get that papyrus! IÂve also got a dwarf one growing in a container and itÂs doing really well. This one has been in this pot since the end of May now and has more than doubled in size. HereÂs a photograph of the whole container with the large papyrus. The canna started blooming yesterday and there is also a cuphea in the bottom of the arrangement. I love it that youÂve got those lilies with Diablo as well!!! What fun and indeed it could be called the Idyll combo. All started with MarieÂs photo on TGForums. Thanks for posting that photograph. Eileen, I have to agree with you that I really like that Mariposa combination. I also agree that itÂs probably the simplicity of it and the strong contrast in values and forms is what gives it its interest. IÂm going to try to save the acalyphas by digging the plants out, pruning then keeping them under lights for the winter. I took cuttings of SueÂs plants last fall but those cuttings have not done much for me so IÂm going to try to save the whole plants this fall. Like Monique, I overwintered the E. ÂDiamond FrostÂ. I found it rooted easily and actually kept some cuttings in water for a couple months before potting them up. Cynthia, you are 100% correct that those lilies are ÂSuncrestÂ. I had to look high and low and finally found the ID information. Cindy, yes that coleus is ÂPink ChaosÂ. IsnÂt that a beautiful variety? ItÂs kind of like a bigger, brighter version of ÂThe FlumeÂ. Thanks again all! Deanne

To answer both of your questions--well, heat IS relative... Too much is when your Fuchsia gives up and dies... Let me explain what the risk is... It's not quite so much heat PER SE. While not exactly prime Fuchsia country, a few people grow them in California's sizzling Central Valley. They will survive there with shade and irrigation. Bear in mind that nights are surprisingly cool there despite the daytime heat. There are two problems. One is that the chemical processes that keep them alive are optimized for relatively cool temperatures. I don't know what those would exactly be, but probably between about 50-70F. As the temperature rises, they get more sluggish. At some point, especially with warm nights, their chemistry starts shutting down. Temperatures in the 80s are warmer than they actually like, in the 90s downright stressful, and in the 100s they are probably wilting. Dry heat is deadly to most Fuchsias--OK, let's talk about the ONE exception I am aware of: Fuchsia lycoides is native to near-desert in north-central Chile, just south of the Atacama desert!!! Funny thing with small leaves (to reduce transpiration). It is RARE in cultivation and most plants called that in the biz are NOT the real thing. It is very distinctive--if you had it, you'd know it! The rest of them turn crisp in dry heat as they do not have much defense against excessive dehydration. What is likely to finish them off is disease. While their own chemistry is sluggish, diseases like Phytophthora thrive in warm, muggy weather. While their resistence to Phytophthora is higher than that of a lot of their South American compatriots, I have heard enough sad stories of them collapsing suddenly in the southeastern states to realize that it is a risk for them. Dragon, is your trailing Begonia a tuberous kind? They like similar conditions. Yes, keeping the roots cool will help a lot. That's one reason I DON'T grow the hanging bastet types; when they are in the ground their roots are better protected. I would have to water them daily in hot weather (not easy for me to accomplish) but worse I would have to take them down and trench them in for the winter, because their roots will not survive hard freezes. I'm actually not south of you, but quite a ways north! Seattle rates a zone 8b because although summers are relatively cool here, winters are not particularly cold because the mountains east of us shelter us from the big continental cold-front systems, while humid marine air makes almost constant cloud cover in the winter that keeps our winter nights from getting as cold as yours. It's a deceptive rating system because my climate doesn't really much resemble Houston's! Here we have the kind of climate they really like: not too hot, not too cold! They are mostly from high elevations in the tropics, where the weather is "eternally springlike", or on the other hand they also exist in southern Chile at low elevations (the ubiquitous Fuchsia magellanica, which forms extensive thickets in the woods of southern Chile), where the climate is very similar to mine: mild summers, mildly chilly winters, and rainfall peaking late autumn, early winter. They used to be popular here through about the 1950s. Every retired chap had to have one hanging next to his window, so that he and the grandkids could watch the hummingbirds feeding on them. There were hundreds of varieties available then. Then their popularity went into decline, and only about a dozen types are still grown, and not as ubiquitously as they used to be. The most heat-tolerant of their kind that I am aware of is the beautiful Fuchsia triphylla from the Caribbean. It tolerates humid (not dry!) heat, and can also grow in dry heat with plenty of irrigation and some shade. Alas it is also VERY tender, freezing to death at about 32F/0C. For you I am afraid it would be an annual, unless you brought starts into a protected place for the winter. It has been bred and there are many lovely named varieties of it. This is probably the one that you read about growing in Texas and Louisiana. Or possibly, among collectors, F. regia. I have a few other Fuchsias that are just about as tender but perhaps from slightly higher elevations; I have no idea how heat-tolerant they are since it is not much of an issue for me. I have F. boliviensis, for example, that is also very tender, but seems to be OK in mildly cool weather and probably isn't as actually heat-loving as F. triphylla. I can sort of get it to overwinter by planting it deep and mulching it, but I lose the whole top at the first significant frost. I have a beautiful Fuchsia--one of my wife's favorites, called Fuchsia xspeciosa, which is believed to be a hybrid but I don't know of what. Whatever it is, it LOOKS tropical but is strangely root-hardy without much intervention on my part. It is not a heavy bloomer, but its large, slightly fuzzy leaves are attractively blushed with sort of a rosy color. Whereas most Fuchsias are non-descript when not in bloom, this one is always rather attractive. Oh, I have one more that might be interesting to you two: Fuchsia campos-portoi is a native of southern Brazil, where it occurs on hills at some elevation. I don't know how hight, but I was under the impression that Brazil's mountains aren't very impressive. Anyway, it is about as coldhardy as Fuchsia magellanica, meaning you could overwinter it with a mulch, and reputedly it is more heat-tolerant than its more common Chilean cousin. I know for a fact that it is fairly sun-tolerant as Fuchsias go--reputedly it grows in the open. Several of the Brazilian Fuchsias are cold-hardier than it would seem they need to be for the modern climate of southern Brazil (comparable to south Florida); they seem to have some vestigial coldhardiness from when the climate was colder, perhaps. Another of these, that I also have, is F. regia, a tall Fuchsia that likes to clamber into trees; it's not really a climber but it likes to grow onto something else to support it, as it does in habitat. It has a very typical small Fuchsia flower, and it sometimes goes cleanly deciduous. It is very coldhardy, despite coming from a fairly warm climate. Probably somewhat heat tolerant for its kind too.

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