I'm looking to get some rooted cuttings or small plant to attract hummingbirds. Have lots of fresh Hibiscus seeds (white flower-red at the center) to trade or I can pay for postage. Thank you. Natalia

Marcia, I have a place in the front of our house, a northeast-facing spot, that I'm going to try the fuchsia. It gets morning sun but afternoon shade. The fuchsia in the pot will go back to PA with me and I hope I can keep it alive and bring it south again in the fall. (I also bought a second honeysuckle for my PA garden!) I have mixed feelings about leaving here--the end of this month is our target date. (Our back door neighbor has promised to water some things for me if we have a dry spring/summer.) While I'll miss seeing how my Florida garden will grow (or not!) over the next couple of months, I'm anxious to see how the bad winter has treated my garden in PA. I'm sure the weeds are doing fine! We're planning to come back here for a few weeks this summer. That will give me a chance to see how the weeds are growing, tend to the garden, and we can make a few trips to the beach :-) Thanks to all of the Florida GW gardeners who have answered my questions and with their photos and suggestions have given me a list of plants I want to grow here. Marcia PA/FL

ALL vining honeysuckles are twiners - that is, they attach themselves to supports by twining stems, not by holdfasts or rootlets. It's my experience that when well established, they grow very vigorously and will easily produce long stems that could have the ability to reach around a telephone pole. But you will have better luck initially if you provide some sort of support system to get the vine started - chicken wire, fishing line, any sort of twine or wire that will give the twining stems a place to start to hold and climb. You might want to check with your phone company about allowing a vine to climb on their poles - here it is prohibited, as it could interfer with maintenance/service. Lonicera sempervirens is also a bit of a misnomer. Only in the very mildest of winter areas will it remain evergreen - it is NOT in my zone 8 climate! And it has no scent, either.

I haven't heard of a white coral honeysuckle, so it will be interesting to hear if it continues with white blooms throughout the summer, and past this bloom season. I know that there's a yellow cultivar of Lonicera sempervirens ('John Clayton'- see link below), so it obviously does 'sport' away from the usual coral/orange-y colors. Hummingbirds will visit the Japanese honeysuckle, so I'm guessing they'll be okay with your mutant white flowers. I planted a 'Major Wheeler' and a 'Magnifica' last spring and they have yet to bloom, although they are vining... This spring I planted a species coral honeysuckle in between the other vines and it is outperforming the older cultivar plants and is ready to bloom already. By the time the hummers come back through here in late summer, I'm hoping all 3 plants will be blooming. Here is a link that might be useful: photo of 'John Clayton' honeysuckle