shrubs_n_bulbs I will have to take another photo for you. As you know this plant sends out suckers. One of these has gone right up the middle of a nearby cypress hedge. It has reappeared at about 6 foot in height and is flowering like mad. It looks like I have suspended a hanging basket of yellow flowers on the side of the hedge.

First I am not trying to argue. Second I have seen your gardens in the uk and they are gorgeous. Just stunning!! To me heirloom is of course a tried and true. Which means open pollination, which simply means that the item in question needs to be pollinated by insects or other means like someone hand pollinating it. Tried and true for generations to me means that it is grown from seed and tried over and over again and it still comes true while being open pollinated unless it is crossed. Melons or Curcurbit can cross within half a mile. Beans and peas do not cross. Tomatoes excluding hybrids potato leaf and currant will not cross. This simply means that if a plant is open pollinated and it is tried and true. That to me means that it produces TRUE seed. Heirloom, tried and true!! In regards to an apple tree, most actually have to have 2 types of apples in order to produce fruit. Now if you are going to try and gather seed you can't very well gather seed without an apple. If natives did not come TRUE from seed regardless if it is a bush, shrub or a flower. Then how do they reseed out in the wild?? 1 criteria of winter sowing is if it reseeds then you can winter sow it. Callicarpa americana is a native. Native means that it is distributed in its area by means of wind or birds or human distribution. Euonymus americanus is another native. Both are shrubs and both come true from seed. IF they are not crossed. Now granted if I was to have 3 types of callicarpa they would not come true from seed, and the ONLY option would then be to propagate from cuttings to get a true plant. Hybrids, the only way to propagate a hybrid is to propagate from cuttings. Some say that if a hybrid sets seed then you can grow it. It is possible in 3 years of saving the seed after 3 generations you may get a stable strain. That to me is not worth it. So I don't mess with hybrids. PawPaw is a native tree that produces fruit, which produces seed, which is true. Mulberry is a tree that produces fruit that produces true seed. There are a lot of fruit trees that actually produce true seed, there are a lot of shrubs that produce true seed. What you have to be aware of is simply: Is there anything that it may have crossed with?? Is it a hybrid?? If people learned botanical names instead the description then this would make seed saving a heck of a lot easier in my opinion. The botanical tells you a lot. Just because you can grow it from seed doesn't mean it will produce true seed. That is why heirlooms are sought is because they DO produce true seed if not crossed. Here is my favorite website on seed saving!! Here is a link that might be useful: Seed Saving

I don't believe any plants are safe from hungry deer. Your idea of netting reminds me of a neighbor's experience. Deer seem to be particularly fond of Indian Hawthorn (Raphiolepsis indica). After placing netting on her shrubs one evening, my neighbor woke in the middle of the night to a terrible commotion. The deer had gotten caught in the netting and stumbled into one of her cars. She hasn't had a deer problem since (and doesn't have to use netting now). I've had good luck with using Deer-Vik, but I alternate that with Deer Fence, a liquid product. A bare branch on my variegated Euonymous this morning tells me I need to spray again. The most surprising deer damage I've had is with my thorny rose bush.

It is not invasive in the ecological sense of the word but it was quite thuggish in my former garden. Reseeded quite freely and somewhat resistant to easy removal :-) If you are interested in a St John's wort, I'd suggest the 'Mystical' series, a group of cultivars of Hypericum x inodorum that are grown specifically for their very brightly and distinctly colored berries - blush pink, slamon coral, orange, red and even black. These are considered quite desirable for cut flower arrangements and the hybrids are very rust resistant, a problem that plagues most other SJW's. Not likely to be nearly as thuggish re: reseeding, either.