Oh dear! I just planted a holly TREE (female) away from the house far enough that I can see it from the deck. I love the look of a nice holly TREE. In the French Quarter of New Orleans, that is the tree planted along the streets in those small planting pockets, they look great, they grow straight, they keep their leaves all year, and they are hard to kill....sounds good to me. BUT, at the house we had on the river (destroyed by Katrina), there were holly shrubs with trunks about 5" diameter, kept the size of the large camellias also planted near the house. All of these survived the salty flood waters without a stutter. They are still on the vacant lot, and far be it from me to try to dig them up. :) All your experiences remind me of the agony we are going through trying to rid ourselves of some darned CAMPHOR TREES. Those roots WILL come back. Each seed eaten by a bird will be pooped into the lawn somewhere, and I make sure I pull up seedlings before we cut the grass each week. One camphor tree we had to use the car to extract the root. We used a chain attached to the trailer hitch. As a boat captain, I can tell you DO NOT GET IN THE PATH OF A LINE UNDER TENSION...especially if it is NYLON. Like a bullwhip, they can come back on you and remove an arm or eye or (as happened to a man offshore) a head. It is very dangerous to keep increasing tension on a line. So just apply SO MUCH, and stay off to one side neither in front of nor behind the direction of pull. A well sharpened pickax (adz if you are from the nawth) can eat through a lot of wood.

Randy, that's a lot. I bet that makes growing Adenium even more fun! Lovely offspring with nice shape and flowers. They are small pieces of art. The parents - and trainer - should be proud.;-) Looks like the first one has some somalense in it (lanceolate foilage with white veins). I like that. Regards, Martin

I bought four big Needlepoint holly bushes (summer close-out sale at Lowe's - 75% off!). They are loaded with red berries. Going to move my roses (again) and other flowering plants over into the former potager garden with the irises (some new and some I dug up, thinned out and transplanted in there. The lavender cuttings are growing really fast and are already 2+ feet tall and very bushy. They are planted along the terrace edge. The roses will go in there. I planted the rosemary plants I rooted in there. The climbing Don Juan will got next to the entrance arbor, opposite the yellow climber on the other side. In the area where the roses are now, I am planting some St. Augustine grass in there. I got it from my dad's yard. He dug starts of it out of my yard in Louisiana 20+ years ago and now it will come home, so to speak. I want to plant one of the hollies on the south end and move the Dogwood down to that area to provide shade in summer. I need shade at the back of the house so I can sit out on the patio, since I never got my covered veranda (pergola). I want to add more evergreens for winter interest and create a cool, lush area around the patio, but nothing right against the patio on account of snakes. I hope to extend the patio area out into the new lawn. I planted one very blue Colorado Blue Spruce last year on the upper side of terrace behind the patio. It was small and since they tend to be rather slow growers, it will be awhile before it becomes the lovely specimen tree I dream of it one day becoming. I have a friend who works at a place where they sell recycled Rail Road ties. "Just bring your little red truck and we'll filler up"! Those will be the new "bones" of my patio terracing. I want to build it up about 3 feet above the patio area. I think it will look pretty nifty - perfect in my "rustic" country cottage style yard. I have a little round preform pool to set in the ground somewhere...just a little reflection pool in a cool area of the garden with my little garden girl statue set beside it, as if she is looking into the pool. I have a great place in mind. Well, that sounds like a lot of "bones" to dig up and relocate, but I already have a bit of a start on it and if I do it like that, a little at a time, by mid-summer next year, God willing, it should look like it has been that way for years and it shouldn't be too hard on MY bones. (hehehe) ~Annie

you guys are missing the boat ... talking about winter and this spring .... and wet making hosta small .. hosta start growing roots in july.. that is when they store energy.. for next spring... it should follow.. that if the storage process failed them .. then in spring... they would be smaller... last july/august.. for most of the midwest.. was the worst drought.. and temps spikes in my entire 30 years of gardening... what.. 10 days in a row above 100 ... falling to 90's for the rest of the period.. and barely a stitch of rain that penetrated the soil ... and you cant make up for all that with a sprinkler ... so.. IMHO .. FWIW ... i cant really see how after it went dormant... how winter could have made it any worse ... nor why water in spring would stunt things ... my theory.. was the insult was late last summer .... ==== bernd .... i smell some denial.. when you say there were absolutely no tree roots.. but will accept that there didnt seem to be many .... i would NOT dig and put stuff under... eventually it would collapse.. and then your hosta will be too deep.. besides the fact.. that i would not work that hard ... lol i would just put a 3 to 6 inch layer of compost around each plant .. just under the canopy ... by fall it will be half.. and by the end of next spring gone.. the worms will have done the work for you ... but if it makes you happy to do extreme hard labor in august.. go for it .... ken