I've never heard of broom plant, but I just bought a Moonlight broom and I can't wait to plant it and see what it looks like as it grows. I have a different view of "invasive" plants. Like weeds, they are super hardy. Unless, they choke out other plants, like kudzu, I don't mind their free spreading habits. The fence on my back property right now is in bloom with the "invasive" yellow honeysuckle and I love it. It smells wonderful, looks very pretty as well. I also have a row of burning bushes along my driveway and they are beautiful, especially in the fall. I've not seen them spread at all, but if they did resow themselves, I'd replant them along other borders of my property. I love the large wild pink roses that grow along fencer ows and bloom freely in the spring. How are they any different than the knockout roses everyone wants to buy. Is it wrong for them to replant themselves instead of having to fuss over having a rosebush that is full of mildew and bugs or have to pay a premium price to own one? They are a superior type of rose in my view and give freely of their beauty. Many trees and plants resow themselves and that is how they survive. What's wrong with that?

Napapen, thank you! We replaced the vine my brother mistakenly pulled up. Never had any critters on it until the last few years. I looked online trying to identify that beautiful butterfly and those awful caterpillars that dessimated Mom's beloved passion vine. We didn't plant for the critters, only planted it for Mom. Never could identify it and now you've done it for me. I just spotted a few butterflies this last week, which means that I will soon be spending my evenings out by the front porch picking of caterpillars.

Mad gallica and Bill, the last time I tested my soil was about 10 years ago and it was 6.0 at that time. I've already decided to do another soil test this year. We'll see if that has anything to do with it. Our neighbor across the street has a great Rhododendron in front of his house that is huge and blooms wonderfully, and he does absolutely nothing to that shrub. So, I'm not sure what the difference is. I have neighbors with five mature Silver Maples within 5 to 15 feet of my lot line on two sides and another neighbor with a London Plane, a White Pine and 7 Spruce trees within 5 to 10 feet of my lot line on another side. And I have a small 1/4 acre lot. We make our own compost and add it every year and spread a lot of bark mulch too, save neighbors leaves with our own and chop them up and mulch with those, use the sprinklers in dry spells. I just think the surrounding trees are sucking the moisture and the nutrients out of the soil. But, maybe the PH could be part of it. The azaleas that I've had the longest have grown and bloom every year and are in the front. My kids gave me 'Girard's Fuchsia' azaleas and a 'Nova Zembla' Rhody for Mother's day the last few years and I planted those in the back in the dripline of the Maples. They did bloom the first year, but they are looking like the leaves are sparse and not as vigorous. The Rhody lost foliage and has a number of bare stems. It has new growth around the base, though. They're just not thriving the way they should. Thanks for mentioning the PH....good idea.

The number of invasive plants we have in the Northwest is really very small considering the vast numbers of plant species that have been introduced to our region and failed to demonstrate any invasive tendncies. Personally, although in theory my position on this subject is moderate, I don't grow invasive or potentially invasive plants nor do I attempt to defend them. The reason... I'm simply too busy trying to keep up with the other 99.9% of plants that aren't invasive. In other words there's so many interesting ornamental plants out there (many of which provide wildlife habitat, economic benefit, etc. as well), why bother with something controversial? (don't answer that question... LOL) I brought some Tamarix parviflora to Fronderosa and got quite a few comments on it... "you know that's invasive right" "I wouldn't want that in my garden".... blah blah blah. Well customers still ought to educate themselves (and of course I try to help) to figure out which species are invasive and which aren't. I've stated before that I don't like to throw out all species in a genus just because of one creating a bad reputation. Another example - out of 812 species of eucalyptus, only 3-4 of them are a problem in California. I guess I bring that up to say that for any invasive plant, there's usually something well behaved that can be substituted for it.... or maybe hundreds of things. Our prairie ecosystems started to decline 100+ years ago with the arrival of non-native European grasses. To me these are some of the worst offending invasive plants (even if they can't colonize closed forest) as they're just so completely beyond control, and don't really have a lot of value as far as I can tell. It's hard to imagine what our prairies might have looked like without them. Well going back farther... I suppose our prairie ecosystems started to decline about 6,000 years ago with the end of the Holocene warm period, and (as has been stated by others in this thread) the areas maintained by burning by the Native Americans might be considered as unnatural relicts from that time.