http://www.bonsai4me.com/ try looking around this site. If your little plants are just seedlings, treat them well, and wait till next year to tinker around with the root or shoot system at all. If the seedlings have a bit of height to them, try merely bending over (carefully) the branches with a weighted string or loosely wrapped wire (that holds it shape fairly well). Bonsai prefer to get a lot of light, or be placed outside. So if your little seedlings are inside, put them in the window!

Hi botanicalboi, I didn't want to reply to your new post that doesn't have any replies yet, (and thus start it on down the page), but wanted to suggest you maybe try posting at the link below. I was curious about all of the Mirabilis varieties you were looking for, researched them a bit, and saw that a 'lot' of them were natives. You might try with a Subject of posting line something like "Wanted different native Mirabilis seeds". or something similar. hth. Sue...aka chemocurl Here is a link that might be useful: Native Plant Exchange

A. Yes, I can envision it :-) It is a relatively common practice on larger properties in my rather rural area. And It was something I did myself in my old garden, although on a significantly smaller scale. Here, one tends to find a percentage of conifers included in the mix as well, which may be something to consider for more year-round uniformity of appearance or privacy. Additionally, this type of mixed planting appeals to the plant geek in me as it offers the opportunity to choose and plant a lot of different stuff! And as Ken likes to point out, this type of mixed planting obviates many of the issues that may arise with a single species or monocultural planting scheme. B. This is entirely your choice. As a designer myself, I am never hesitant to suggest employing a landscape designer :-) But you seem to have a pretty clear grasp of what you want to accomplish so I am not sure whether this process is really necessary. If you are familiar with the plants you intend to be using, recognize their individual cultural requirements and suitable placement and spacing, a general, 'designed' layout is something you should be able to develop yourself. I think one of the features of this type of mixed planting scheme is the degree of randomness involved. The result should look quite natural rather than carefully planned (even though it may be). Depending on the depth of this border, I would include some natural pathways/trails through to access the areas that may need hands-on attention as the plantings establish and mature. You might find The Natural Garden by Ken Druse a helpful resource. Well illustrated with a lot of inspirational photos outlining virtually exactly what you intend. And it may also offer some plant choices you might not have considered. You can find this used on Amazon for next to nothing or maybe available at your local lending library.

This has turned out to be a much more interesting discussion than I dreamed! What fascinating stories you all tell … family histories are so often rife with astonishing tales, aren’t they? I’m glad that so many of you understand what I was getting at in my OP. I find that particularly as I age, I long to know more about those who came before me. I have done some genealogical work, as did my grandmother many years ago, and at least we know where our forebears on both sides came from (for the most part). It has long been rumored that there is Native American ancestry in my family, but we have been unable to pinpoint that exactly, and I’d love to know for sure. Anyway, this discussion prompted me to take out the very old photo album that was in my aunt’s possession before she passed away. It contains photos of my ancestors going back to the Spanish-American War, and is something I desperately need to preserve. (Right now, it’s in an album that is falling apart at the seams.) Part of the trouble that so many young people seem to have is in envisioning the old people in their lives as young people themselves. My maternal grandmother was always “old” to me … even when she was in her 50s, she seemed quite old. Shortly before she died, I learned that she had been on a girls’ basketball team when she was a teenager. Imagine! My “old” grandmother, who was overweight and crippled with arthritis, a basketball player! I also came into possession of some photos of her as a girl that I had never seen before, and it truly put her in a whole new light. She was once young. She was once vibrant with quite likely very similar hopes and dreams to those that I had. If it’s so “easy” to relegate those that we KNOW to the time and place in which we know them, then it’s all the easier to do so when it comes to historical figures (or even just everyday people from the past) that we do not. I’m really going to make an effort to try to think of those “bygone folks” as wholly human and not merely characters – or worse, caricatures. The book I’m reading on Billy the Kid delves into the difficulties of frontier life in the 1800s, and talks of how devastating tuberculosis was at the time. On our recent trip to New Mexico, we visited a national monument near Las Cruces where the ruins of an old sanitarium stood. We also saw a house in Lincoln that had been set up as a sort of makeshift ward for “consumptive” patients. It’s mind-boggling to think of how many died from that terrible disease, and the lengths that those who survived went to in order to overcome. I too wonder if the difficulties of just making it to a ripe old age impacted how people thought and talked and otherwise conducted themselves on a day-to-day basis. I have to think they probably had a much stronger grasp of “not sweating the small stuff” than we do in our modern, technologically-advanced era.