Here is where you should make your pruning cuts. Don't worry, the bougainvillea can easily tolerate the most heinous cuts. Make sure your tree is healthy and vigorus. You will see new growth all over the tree. Wire the new growth early before it gets hard or you will have to start over. Good luck! Chris

I can't really give you any advice on the Inkberry. I don't have it myself, have seen it do great in some places. You might want to dig around the base to see if there was a planting issue (was it planted too low, is it too close to the house and the overhang is not allowing it to get the rain?). The Blue Boy should be fine for the Blue Princess as they are both types of Ilex x meserveae. If you don't see evidence of pollination after the first full year in place, you can add a Blue Prince somewhere to the property then, but I don't think you'll need it.

I. pedunculosa is one of my favorites, because of the great berries and the lack of spines on the leaves. After searching for them for years, I scored a handful of them in the bargain section of a local nursery - nobody knew what they were. I have 4 females and a male, about 6' tall now, and forming a nice hedge along the border with the manicured yard next door. Not specimens, by any means, but glossy, dense, and covered with berries even though they're in fairly heavy shade. Not being sure how they'd fruit there, I interplanted a couple of deciduous varieties, which I should probably move out now as the longstalks have filled in and it's gotten a bit crowded. My main problem with other hollies - blue ones in particular - has been that they never reach the height I need. I've already removed one row of lovely holly which were advertised as something like 10 x 6', and of course they were 6' tall and 20' wide by the time I gave up on them ever providing screening from the 2 story house next door. The replacements, - Blue Prince and Princess, I think - don't seem to be in any hurry to top the 6' fence, although they're supposed to be 10-15'. I may have to replace them with some tall volunteer American hollies that have sprung up around the garden, although I hate to think of the eventual width of those. I do love Ilex glabra, the NE native. It's hard to find any that are not listed as compact cultivars, which is too bad. I have only 1, and it's awfully nice - understated, slightly formal, always clean-looking foliage. They get a little leggy, but I like that because it allows air circulation at the ground level where there are perennials. I'll have to have a look at the propagation forum - that would be a fun enterprise.

It's a delightful plant but like most eremophilas it suffers fungal problems in coastal areas. The symptoms you describe I'd consider its normal condition over winter. It should pick up thru spring. What I do is plant in a full sun, well drained area and mulch with stones or gravel to store heat overnight and to keep foliage away from fungal spores. Also I feed well to try and out grow disease, flat out or dead is the lot of these plants in conditions so unlike their natural ones.