This is my fault as I should have the read my response before I posted it. But the libray was closing and I was running out of time. Whenever, I plant anything. I put a mixture of topsoil, compost and the original soil that I dug out. That way I don't get the bathrub effect which would kill most of my garden, the other trees I planted which bloom just fine and my all roses. Other thing, is I also use earthright once or twice a year. I haven't yet this year but I have to this month or I have to wait until fall. Like I said I did talk to Johnson county garden extension office that told me that it might be growing issue. As the tree has really taken off in the last two year. The other times it didn't bloom were to late freeze but this year that shouldn't been an issue. In early May the lowest we got was 38 which did affect some of the leaves but not enough to keep it from blooming. There are some blooming in a near by city. Ants are not an issue because they prefer my Pin oak.

I'm sorry for not having posted anything recently. The alyssums are busy growing and I've been busy digging out the rock chips our previous home owners left behind on our front yard! I will talk about that in another post soon! Ginny, I bought the Burpee's Royal Carpet Alyssum seeds that have purple blooms. I've read now that the white ones are the hardiest ones, so I am waiting to see how they do. Thanks for mentioning the Bog garden, je148! If alyssum fails on me, then that is the route I will have to take. And that boat looks amazing. With the lighthouse, I can only imagine how good it would look. Ginny, love the wheelbarrow. I just may steal that idea of yours!

I like the suggestion of kale but sometimes getting it to be at the right stage at the right time for a wedding can be tricky in a home garden. For an autumn wedding, you'd have to start it from seed in summer, transplant into the garden in autumn, and keep it sprayed to keep the cabbage loopers (I've been hand-picking them off cole crops all week longs) or imported cabbage worms from leaving holes in the leaves. You also could grow it in containers. I wouldn't try to raise kale plants in anything smaller than a gallon container, with one plant per container. You could put several of them in a really large container though, or grow a row in your garden to harvest and use as needed. Ornamental kale comes in green (kale's green tends to be a dark bluish-green), white, pink, red, and purple, although the red is not a bright red---it is more of a subdued wine red or almost burgundy. Most ornamental kale plants are two tone---like green and purple, green and white, green and pink, etc. Growing kale from seed is ridiculously easy---you grow it the same way you grow cabbage, broccoli, etc. Grasshoppers prefer edible garden kale to all other kale crops, at least in my garden, but rarely touch the ornamental kale. Maybe they don't like the frilly leaves. The ornamental kale plants in my garden were planted into the ground in early October from transplants started from seed in August, and they're about 1/2 grown now. They might be larger but early in the fall they had to fight a lot of hot, dry weather and grasshoppers. I have seed for pink, red and white varities for spring. For fall, I am growing white and purple ones. There's a special kind of kale grown for cut flowers. The variety of the cut flower kale with which I'm familiar is 'Crane' and it comes in several colors. It is a hybrid which means you would get fairly uniform plants with it, which would be important if raising them for a wedding. I'll link one example of crane below. Harris Seeds has a good selection of ornamental kale varieties as does Pinetree Garden Seeds. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Kale Crane at Harris Seed

Have nicely rooted ligularia or some rooted named salivas. Would have to check the names later today. Also have seed pods from Green Goddess Calla Lily- would many about 100 plants, easy to propagate. Makes a great long lasting cut flower, wholesale price per stem $3. My flowers get almost 5' tall!Let me know if you're interested. Bobbi