So many pentas are propagated by cuttings. Ask Longwood Gardens where they got the plants. Get a plant and take cuttings. Also before you buy seed, on a search engine type in "pentas trials" or similar. You can get good performance info that way, particularly if a trial is in your area. If you search you may land on one variety or color. Check the main list; often they trial several pentas if they do a penta trial. Some of the pentas that are readily available from seed turns out not to be great trial performers. The biggest issue is lack of uniformity between plants. On your search results you may have to click several pages before you see all trials. Example link below. UGA is always good as well as UoF and the Dallas trials and many others. Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell

What sort of yellow is the house? There's a big difference between the yellows that are lemony and the yellows that are gold. (Trust me, answering this question really does matter. ;) ) You will soon find that since you live in the DC area you have a good number of choices. If you are willing to spray fungicide on the rose to control black spot fungus, you will have even more choices.

Yes, they need time. Another reason the previous owners may have had them super tall is that they could have been crowded in. They tend to grow taller that way. I have one hosta, in its 6th year, that has progressively gotten taller and taller. This year it's 32" tall. But at year 2, it was MAYBE 8" tall. It needs time to develop big fat roots.... it needs to be in the same spot for a period of time... get it into the ground and keep it there. Give it lots of water, and a good amount of sunlight... not enough to scorch it, but a few hours a day. And patience!

The doors in the lighter stain are maple, the darker ones are knotty alder and I think the stair rails are beech or fir. This build is already a bit fuzzy. :) I'm sorry, but I don't remember what color stains we ended up with either. We went through tons of sample boards. Make sure you use the same wood for the samples because we ended up with lots of different stain colors depending upon the wood type. Sue - I am normally very funky about things needing to be symmetrical, but in this location I love the way it looks. The shorter doors off this room are to the toyroom, the bathroom and the utility room, whereas the taller cased opening is to the guest bedroom. I think the opening makes it special and because they are on different walls they work, but not for everyone.