Loveley gardens jkom51! I'm originally from the East Bay too! Pleasant Hill, and it's nice to see some of the stuff we grew! Loved the purple Iris, my mom always loved the Ballerinas, had them in every color. I now have that variegated vinca in my garden, I love it. I'm trying to acclimate myself to gardening in the Pac NW. It's a whole different Ball Game. (Still wear my A's hats up here! :o) Thanks for sharing!

Eventhough I am in Zone 7a, I visit and chime in there from time to time. Good stuff.

Jay, I found the announcement under the post of New Garden Galleries posted by GWtamara. RE: See the New Garden Galleries! Posted by gwtamara (My Page) on Wed, Jul 26, 06 at 15:48 Tropical Fruit forum is coming -- should be built and launched within the next few weeks. Minibim, you've seen the many discussions of the copyright issue. GW has never said they own the photos -- but, when you post a picture, you are allowing us to use it. You will always retain the ownership of the picture

There are of course forums in existence for some genera/families that have many members that are cool growing tropicals. However, in each case the true cool growers can be grown only by a minority of people. Moreover, people who grow one type of cool-growing plant are likely to grow others. To put it all in one forum makes sense. There are a lot of practical considerations, for example, trading. Say, for example, one has seedlings/rooted cuttings of a plant that can only grow in Coastal California or a cool greenhouse. Post on any of the forums. Most of the people (in my experience) who will be interested in trading have conditions that are impossible for growing the plant. Here are the options: 1) Let them worry about it and send the plant to a sure death. 2) Caution them that it won't survive, but send it anyway. 3) Refuse to send the plant to those without appropriate conditions. Since this thread is a little boring with no pictures, I'll add one, to include two concrete examples: '' The Passiflora is P. 'Mission Dolores', P. parritae x antioquiensis. It's a strong grower when happy and really easy to propagate. Two node cuttings root in a couple weeks. The Bomarea on the top is Bomarea caldasii (the yellow flower on the right is also a Bomarea, if I remember possibly a variety of B. caldasii as well). Each flower produces about 100 seeds and each umbel can have dozens of flowers. So there are potentially thousands of seeds per umbel. The flowers above are "samples" brought by one of the propagators (who created the Passiflora hybrid) to help sell plants at Strybing (SF Botanical Garden). The Passilflora is 7 inches in diameter with 18-24 inch peduncles, which makes the Bomarea umbels look strangely small. Although I cannot claim credit for the flowers, I do grow both of these vines. I'll have to hack back my Passiflora starting later in the year. I hate to toss material for interesting plants. So I'll hopefully have a large number of cuttings rooted. My Bomarea was bought in bloom/bud earlier this year, but aborted seeds when we had a couple days in the 90s (June-Aug. average: 74/55). So if I end up with extra cuttings and seeds and want to distribute them for postage, which forum(s) do I post on? I likely will put the Passiflora on the Passiflora forum, although I know I will run into the problem described above. I've already decided to go for option (3). There is no appropriate forum for the Bomarea. Vines? California? If I end up with a zillion seeds I might go for option (2). Or perhaps suggest that people sprout the seeds then trade them for something suited to their climate. I don't like either scenario, and I would prefer to at least have the forum enriched for those who can potentially succeed with a plant. I tried posting a set of seeds for postage on the California Gardening exchange section earlier in the year. Of seven, three were highland tropicals, one a cool-growing Chilean annual, one S. African, and one lowland tropical. I didn't get a single response. See link below Here is a link that might be useful: Highland tropical seeds ignored on the California forum