Holy moley - the psyllids have really done a number on your tomatoes. :( Most of mine are looking increasingly bad, but they're not quiet as affected as yours look to be. Keep us posted on the insecticide trial. I have a bed of tomatoes that went in much later than the rest, and consequently have been largely untouched, that could benefit from whatever you find out with the batch of plants you're using that stuff on now, and the plants that you'll be planting out soon. Also, from what I've read, although the psyllids will feed on the pepper plants, they don't seem to do near as much damage to them as they do the tomatoes, so the plants should be able to hold up.

>And if there are some hedges to help enclose the fragrance, hopefully it will make it more powerful. Hello astphard, The roses you are considering all sound lovely! Two others that are fragrant and *might* work in a no-spray yard--if you're not too picky about perfect foliage--are Maggie and Reine Des Violettes. We have a no-spray yard and have our fingers crossed on these two on order now. They are beautiful perfumed roses that I've already arranged in the vases in my imagination! Also, Vintage Gardebs describes their found rose Westside Road Cream Tea as having a strong lemony tea fragrance; that one is also on order here to keep Maggie and Reine Des Violettes company in the vases. I figure if a rose can get by without any care for awhile, then it stands a reasonable chance of getting by here no-spray. Regarding your hedging idea, my loveliest memories of wafting are of a single gardenia plant that was maybe five feet tall fairly close to an entry. I haven't seen an entire hedge of gardenias, but that plant might make a nice one. Another idea for a fragrant hedge, or a component of a fragrant hedge, would be the sasanqua camellia Hugh Evans, and that one has lovely more recent memories attached to it. The prolific rosey flowers are nice and hold on the camellia without shattering much better than other sasanqua camellias. But probably the main reasons to buy that particular plant are its lovely small-leaved weeping form and its strongly wafting musk perfume. We have some other sasanquas and they are all supposed to have a noticeable fragrance, but none have so noticeable a wafting fragrance as Hugh Evans when it's blooming. Its weeping form makes the plant, whether in bloom or not, into an eye-catching feature in our yard. I suppose the prevailing winds might have favored where we repeatedly were sitting in appreciating this camellia, maybe 25 feet away from the plant (which is tree-sized now) flowering for about two months in the fall. Anyway, in the past few years when we've gotten sufficient rain or watered well in the fall, the fragrance has been fabulous. (Note: an oversupply of rain when making and producing blooms, as long as there's good drainage, helps hugely with fragrance.) Hugh Evans grows fairly quickly for a camellia and will end up being taller than a gardenia, but the small foliage ought to look nice with a gardenia and whatever else you might want to put along the periphery. If you go in this direction, the large spreading bushy rose Ghislaine de Feligonde also has some fragrance and would be evergreen in New Orleans. It could also tolerate some shade when/if any other nearby plants got tall on one side or the other. Best wishes, Mary

Jeanne d'Arc is turning into a real beauty of a shrub as it completes it's second summer in my zone 10 garden (just east & uphill of Venice Beach in LA). It's mostly coastal conditions here on the hilly streets of Mar Vista, and the past couple summers have been pretty cool, but J d'Arc is thriving, even in a position partially shaded by a sycamore in the morning. She's becoming a graceful arching open shrub 5-6ft high and blooms almost nonstop. The pure white flowers are about 2" & sometimes touched with blush pink, and there's no mildew on the leaves or branches- a real feat here as a lot of roses are covered in PM (Teas & Chinas, I'm looking at you), and the fuller flowered roses often ball and rot until late summer. Also, especially with our recent cooler summers - it seems like "June gloom" is now May -early Aug - there's simply not enough consistent heat and sun for HTs and Teas to really thrive. I'm running out of hot spots to baby prize roses, but Jeanne d'Arc seems to be happy no matter where she's planted here.

One of my favorites! The blooms often blow fast, but there's always an abundance of them! And oooooh that scent!! One of the best.