still confused.. what .... are you trying top challenge me??? ... lol in FL.. with an 11.5 month growing season... its going to grow a lot more... than it would in z4 WI.. where the soil is frozen solid for 5 months.. that isnt hard ... and you are closer to WI zone-wise.. than FL .. lol ... i think your biggest problem to getting a handle on this... is that one tag could have been printed in FL .. and one in WI ... WHY ARE YOU RELYING ON SOME TAG PRODUCED BY SOME TOTAL STRANGER ...??? [and that logic would flow to un-sourced web pages also] it will grow.. as it will grow.. in YOUR garden.. in YOUR soil.. in YOUR zone.. the way it will grow ... just plant them .. and dont worry about it ... sometimes the quest for knowledge.. makes one worry too much ... so you just end up doing it ... thx for the kind words.. and good luck ken

in z5 . everything is just getting going.. so i would give it another month or so ... did you have the extreme cold winter i had in my z5 ...??? if so .. i would probably.. without a pic.. write the damage off to that ... are yours deciduous in winter??? is the damage basically down to where you might suspect there was snow cover all winter.. say 1 foot off the ground... if so .. the damage above is surely winter damage ... ken

Well, he's not going to be the one doing the pruning, is he? Privets can get huge, as you already know, and the golden vicary isn't an exception; one website said that it grows up to 14 inches a year. 14 inches! That's more than one or two prunings, IMHO. Maturity for this plant is reportedly 6' to 12' high, 8' to 10' wide; if you need to keep it at 2 feet, you are, basically, going to be fighting nature for the forseeable future. Don't let your landscape designer make you work so hard - you've got the $$$, you get the final say-so.

The pH makes a tremendous difference - you guys are further north then us in Chi town and get colder temps but it sounds like the soil is a bit lighter and the pH is in the correct range. You most likely also have more reliable snow cover then us as well. For us here in N. IL, my feeling is there's too many factors going against to have any notable success with azaleas & rhodies even the 'Northern Lights' series. The soil in general is very heavy black clay except along the very edge of Lake Michigan and certain other isolated pockets; it tends to be wet and gummy over the winter (a plant killer), along with unreliable snow cover (which is an insulator) and add to that a high pH and the added stress of cold temperatures usually results in near failure or marginal success. For Virtuosity, I've seen your place over in the Design forum - a new subdivision probably means you have not much in the way of topsoil so I'd recommend skipping some of these so called bargains from the box stores and taking a trip down in the spring to Natural Gardens for some colorful tough native shrubs or good cultivars. You'll pay more but you'll come away with expert advice from the staff and plants that will work for you in your environment. Limestone bedrock occurs naturally in many areas under the subsoil in N. IL and no amount of ammendments is going to permanently alter the existing pH to any significant degree.