Hi all. Thanks for the nice comments. Dave, yes we are surrounded by a huge natural rockery on wich we could hardly improve.Our actual garden is only about half an acre plus another acre or so where our greenhouses are.We hope to buy some more land... I hauled all the rock myself from higher up in the mountains.About a ton per trip. Nice J.Hillier you've got there - thanks for the tip & photo. The lawnmower starting device flew to bits last summer so I decided to keep it running 'as is' until it gives up the ghost. B&S spare parts are hard to come by and replacement engines cost about as much as a complete new mower!!! Hi Sluice. The crop with the pink flowers is sage .I don't know the exact name, but it's bi-annual and is used in the perfume industry. I'll try and get a close-up shot together tomorrow. Kman The large Yucca is probably Y. rostrata ,but it is unusually large for that species.It also produces numerous suckers ,wich is also uncommon.It could also be Y. elata or perhaps a hybrid. It came up as a stray seedling in a Yucca schottii sowing about twenty years ago. The cholla is probably Cylindropuntia spinosior or imbricata.Many forms exist wich makes identification difficult.We got this one back in Britain some thirty years ago and it has always been outdoors!!! In front of it is Opuntia scheeri wich is also bone-hardy.The agave is A. parryi v. cousei. The (still) small tree with the silvery leaves is Elaeagnus angustifolia v. caspica (syn. 'Quicksilver' or Russian Olive).I'm trying to shape it into a small tree, but in reality it is more like a shrub.The mound-shaped plant is Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve' or B.M Wallflower. I just clipped away the hundreds of spent flowering stalks to encourage it to perform again.I will also take cuttings soon as it lasts only two to three years. Hi Dax. The arbor is made from chestnut timber wich has good natural rot-resistant qualities.I am training a weeping Himalayan cedar over it to provide some shade for that bench and the rockery.This may not have been a good choice as it seems to be extremely vigorous. More pictures coming soon! T.

Plan! 1. Continually assess for future cramming. The next couple years will still be very busy in this regard. This Spring for example, I sold, traded or moved over 300 specimens. 2. Allow those that mix well to 'grow into' eachother. As long as the plants are very slow growers, or only have minor 'collisions', I'll happily allow them to 'mesh' together i.e. nature. This will take a lot of thinking and planning, but considering how much effort I've put into the first two years of gardening, I feel more then up to the challenge. 3. Any VERY large specimens that can't stay will go to a local botanical garden, with whom I am partners with. I'll either be paid in cash or in trade(more plants!) with which I can sell or plant at friends, neighbors, etc. The botanical garden is over 90 acres, so we have a lot of space to use and he's already asked me to plan for a future 'conifer walk', a 5-10 acre section full of mainly large dwarves and other larger conifers where visitors can walk a series of windy paths through these wonderful plants. 4. Some plants *will* have to be removed, outright to conifer heaven as Ken likes to say. The idea here is that I can keep whatever looks great and not worry when other plants don't. 5. Gifts. I've found that most of my plants are more then happy being transplanted, provided I dig a decent sized hole and then give them 3-6 months to establish. With the plants I've already moved to the rock garden at the botanical garden, we've literally had a 100% success rate of transplant - and that's over some 100-150 plants. Plenty of conifer lovers, friends, family, neighbors, etc. that would be happy to take my 'removed leftovers' and plop them into their yard. My current total is somewhere between 1150 and 1250 different conifers - a total of about 1600-2000 once you account for duplicates. Eventually in 15-20 years, I expect I'll have 400-600 on my property and the rest will have been moved, died, given away, sold, traded, etc. If you want to worry about me, picture me trying to water these gazillion plants as a full-time firefighter!! Now that's the hard part! And don't be sorry for your opinion. It's allowed(and has been repeated here), and I'm taking it all into consideration, even if you do have monkeybrains! -Will

Hello and thanks so much for this fun swap!!!!!!!!! Shirley & Craftie2 & Corrine & Vina thanks for the congrats. It felt so good to win that I actually jumped up and did a dance. My significant other, Noel, went running for his camera so I calmed right down lol. No need for documentation... but I am so in love with all things garden and gardening that the idea of a "supa prize" got me up into the air. Corrine, thank you for your thoughts on attitude -- I think you've got that absolutely right and I'll be filing your examples in the back of my mind and pulling them out when necessary and applicable....probably tomorrow lol!!!! Have had a lot of fun and enjoyed meeting you all -- looking forward to sharing and hearing about everyone's gardening exploits and experiences in the coming season. Thank you so much Vina for brightening each day with your stories and wonderful pictures, games, etc. and for all your organizational effort!!! Best wishes, Barbara rhodes145

Maybe it’s 60 by 100,I don’t know, not good at measuring and too lazy to dig out the house papers! Haha,it’s a typical size city lot. No suburban gal her. I know I have plenty of grass, but those ares getsun. Every year my maple gets bigger, so more shade now than when the bed was cut. When I go to Fox hosta farm.....maybe.........