They might be viable. Might. Use a small and not too deep pot. (One serve yoghurt pots are useful, with a generous hole in the bottom.) Very free-draining mix. Small and sharp grit on the top. Dampen the mix as you would for seed raising and let it drain. Make a small thumb press in the middle of the gritty topping and rest the Cyclamen tuber in it. Put it somewhere friendly - dappled light, occasional rain, free of big wet falling leaves and romping wildlife. Check it from time to time. If it has not ventured any leaves after a month then it has probably Gone Too Far. You'll know if it has because it will have a) collapsed into a hollow shell b) rotted away entirely c) become a corky mummified lump. Here's to fresh leaves! Which is not to say that it won't dash your hopes later on... But, you're a gardener, and you know that ;-).

Damn! Had a reply all typed out, but it never posted... Hopefulauthor: It is indeed my first cyclamen. Been slightly traumatic, watching those beautiful blooms and leaves turn to mush... How can you tell the difference between the natural dormancy cycle and true death? I might just be freaking out, but it went downhill just this week after I doused it. And there were new blooms. GB: Thanks for the info. Looks like National Pigeon Grit is a bust. AL: HOWEVER! When I went to return my MG bags I stumbled upon something called Pearl Stone Decorative Soil Cover, which is really just a silly name for some irregularly shaped rocks. The particle size ranged from 1/8" at the very smallest to just a little bigger than 1/4". The bag doesn't tell me the kind of stone, but it probably wouldn't have additives. The Mosser Lee website says, "Mosser Lee Pearl Stone represents the finest in quality rock bedding. The small particles are perfectly designed to loosen heavy soils and provide excellent bases for any gardening or craft project. Pearl Stone�s rich grey color and small dimension are designed for creative creations." Would these work? Well, I guess the point of the granite is that you know it holds water, and this might not. I also found lava rocks though, and other decorative rocks from Whitney Farms. Does anyone have any positive experience with these? If not, I'm officially throwing in the towel on grit and turning to pumice and course perlite. City gardening is *inconvenient*! Here is a link that might be useful: Mosser Lee Pearl Stones

Oh boy, we could swap failure stories forever, could we not? But that is part of the game of plant love. We try to grow the impossible, and even the nominally easy and things don't go as planned. We learn something each time but that school of hard knocks sure has steep tuition fees. Take heart though that many of us just have an irrational impulse to persevere through drought and flood, cold and heat waves, plagues and bad soil. And over time we (mostly) get something we enjoy. It took many tries to get my patch of lenten roses going for example. Now they are happily expanding on their own. I have never been able to get cyclamen to expand. But others have, including trilliums. And the stories go on and on. These failures and successes are one of the key reasons to have lots of gardening friends and to be generous giving away plants. Friends can give you lots of advice that cost them plenty to obtain and when your beloved plants die, you may (hopefully) be able to get them back if one of your friends has a propagated piece of it around. But enough philosophizing. To your question: the container gardening forum at gardenweb is full of recipes for good soil. I have found most of them work fine as long as you keep organic content below 40 per cent. More than that and the soil will literally disappear in front of you with age (it compacts to nothing as the plants and microbial life use it up). You need some of the soil to be inorganic so it will keep it's tilth/structure. Good loam is equal parts sand, silt and clay with 20 to 30 per cent organic content *which includes the worms, insects, roots and other microbes themselves*. All these measures are by volume. For your specific situation, I would use 30 per cent permatill, 30 per cent whatever organic material you have (manure, compost, humus or a combo of all 3), and 40 per cent of your native soil or if it is too clay-heavy then purchase a couple of yards from a local landscape supply store. I use the one near us on Norwood or Triangle Landscape supplies or whoever is selling good grade stuff. Watch out for reclaimed materials from human waste sludge that some people add to raise organic content - it is glue like in behavior and I suspect it carries some pathogens. Buying stuff in bags is too expensive - you can get 27 cu ft in 1 cu yd - at 24 dollars/yd for good soil (no.3 landscape soil fines in my supplier's parlance) or less than 1 dollar a cu ft and it's already 1/3 inorganic (sand mostly.) It makes sense to buy in bulk. Plus you can get it delivered. The down side is you have to shovel it to where you need it. I have had good luck using used up soil from repotting my containers, and from using old already-amended soil from my existing beds for the inorganic fraction. If I were pushed to buy stuff and I did not have anything handy near by, I'd probably use the "top soil" sold in bags at Lowe's and Home Depot for the inorganic component of my mix, with maybe 10 per cent sand added. You may be getting the impression that these proportions are somehow scientific. Nothing could be further from the truth. Plants are very adaptable as long as they have proper air and moisture levels at the roots. They'll even grow in completely inorganic mixes like pure turface if you can control the watering and feed them liquid micronutrients. That's the same as static hydroponics. My point is, don't worry too much about getting these mixes right. You are not baking a cake, more like seasoning a stew. Done to taste, with attention to what you are growing and how it responds, and then feeding compost and lime as needed. That is it. The rest is trial and error. If you have not gotten a hold of Elizabeth Lawrence's book "A Rock Garden in the South", go to your nearest library and borrow it. Also, the North American Rock Garden Society is a great resource as are the friendly folks at the local chapters. There's one here in the Triangle. A final note: all these info applies to open garden beds which have an underlying stratum. Gardening in containers is a whole different ball game. For those I use 60 per cent fine ground pine bark, 20 per cent vermiculite and the rest compost with some plants receiving a little sand and or granite dust. Because of the physics of small enclosed spaces, potting soil needs to be very loose and full of air pockets while containing billions of micro pores that hold moisture and air simultaneously. Once used up (after 1 to 2 years) these mixes are great added to your garden beds but even the best garden soil will water log your plants in a container because of the suspended water table dynamics even if you use a wick. More on this in the container and bonsai garden forums if you want to learn more about it. Part of the fun is figuring all the tricks out. I have been gardening since I was a boy with my grandma and I am still a newbie, learning stuff every day. Enjoy it. RJ

ken - '...multi millionaires and hopped across the pond every year to look at gardens' - don't I wish....! :-) floral - thanks for the info re that cotoneaster. I did some additional checking and I don't think I have a place for it... Is it compatible with growing around/ under other - small- shrubs or would it choke then out? katob - If you're visiting Niagara Falls, stop in at the Niagara Botanical Gardens. The Butterfly Conservatory on the grounds of the Botanical Gardens is also very much worth a visit. The RBG rock garden is a short distance away from the main RBG gardens - if you only have time to visit one site, go to the rock garden! Lots and lots to see in a relatively small site. RBG is a huge property of 2000+ acres. Much of it is 'natural lands' and a lot of their resources are devoted to conservation etc. The ornamental gardens are smaller and spread out over several locations - and not as well maintained! - than you might expect. (They are chronically short of funds, and it shows in the maintenance....!) I'm glad you enjoyed the tour - we certainly enjoyed the garden. One picture I meant to post but forgot is this one: I assume it's a beautybush.... It was foaming out of the hill and was visible from almost everywhere in the garden - if you look at the second picture I posted at the start of the thread, you can see it on the left side. Once the flowers finish, it'd would retreat into the green background, but it sure looked good on Thursday!