There is a vicious circle of supply and demand. The nurseries are loath to expend space, time, and materials on a plant that very few people are asking for. And no one is going to ask for a plant that they are not able to see in all of its glory in their neighbor's yards, in the garden centers, or in that new commercial landscape in the middle of town. A plant with little or no recognition factor for the general public is not likely to be snapped up at the big box stores where there is no one to extol its virtues. And unless a plant does very well for a long period of time in a container, in a garden center environment, it is not likely to decorate our urban landscapes. Sad, but true.

Thanks for the replies! It has gotten much worse since I posted last week. All of the leaves are dry and crispy. Is it too late to try to do something? It is still in the 100s here, but looks like a cooling trend will be starting this weekend (lower 90s woohoo!). Would it be a good idea or bad idea to fertilize now? I dont have a suitable place to plant it in the ground right now. I'm currently in a townhouse, and I only have a couple of narrow flowerbeds in the back for planting space. My thought was that I would buy a house in the next two years and raise the tree in a container until then.

Hi Rhoni Ann, Lots of people are painting red/orangey-red brick homes nowadays. If you're a fan of the Fixer-Upper TV show on HGTV, you've probably noticed that Chip and Joanna Gaines have totally transformed the exterior of many brick homes by painting that red/red-orange brick in all sorts of lovely shades of gray, creamy white or beige. After they add new trim and sometimes shutters and window boxes (depending on the style of the home and the look they're going for), along with new landscaping, those homes look just as transformed on the exterior as they are on the interior. Keep in mind that once you paint your brick, assuming you are going with a lighter color, it will reflect heat and light, but I have found there are lots of plants which grow well on the hotter west and south sides of homes that what a person might expect. First of all, if you will amend your clay with compost or some other organic material before you plant, then your plants will do so much better that it will blow your mind and you won't have to water nearly as much. We have dense, thick red clay (the kind you could use to make clay pots) that had zero organic matter when I tested it when we moved here in 1999. When they dug the holes for our percolation test for our septic system when we built our house, most all of the water remained in the holes after 24-hours, which explains why we have a lagoon instead of leach lines. Along our south and west facing walls, cannas have done really well in only lightly amended clay. If you plant the tall ones that get 4-7' tall, they will form their own mini-wall along the bring wall, and they don't really mind the heat as long as you water them occasionally in summer. They die back in winter, but you can cut off the ugly dead foliage at the ground so you don't have to look at it all winter long. Cannas are very strong, resilient plants, fitting into my favorite category of plants that I describe in this manner: they won't die and you can't kill them. In front of those taller cannas, you could the short, compact evergreen shrubs of your choice so you'd have something green there year-round. Some of the shorter varieties of hollies would work, and hollies come with many different leaf shapes from the very small leaves of yaupon hollies to the larger leaves of other forms of holly. If you don't want evergreen shrubs on the west side of the house, you could plant daylilies, lantana, gomprena (aka globe amaranth), zinnias, cosmos and some perennial members of the salvia family. All of these do well in well-amended, well-draining soil and only need moderate amounts of water in summer as long as they are well mulched. Or, you could plant ground cover type plants that thrive in full sun. Purple wintercreeper is a lovely greenish groundcover that is low maintenance. We just cut ours back to the ground with the string trimmer once or twice a year. It turns purplish-green in the cold season. Its flowers are not very obvious but then they give you lovely little berries. Hollies, by the way, are one of my favorite plants for clay soil because once they are established many of them are really drought-tolerant as well as heat-tolerant. If you like crape myrtles they are very heat-tolerant and come in all sorts of sizes, from more tree-like forms that can attain 20-40' Crape Myrtle Trails--Varietiesin height to weeping forms only a couple of feet tall. Be sure to purchase named crape myrtles varieties so you can Google those varieties before you buy to ensure you're getting the right size for your area. Sometimes the ones sold at places like Wal-Mart don't give a variety name on the tag, so you have no idea what you're getting. There's nothing worse than planting a big variety of crape myrtle in an area that is only appropriate for a small to medium sized one because you'll spend tons of time trying to prune back the big one to keep it small enough. Depending on the color you ultimately choose to paint your brick, you might like some of the Black Diamond series of crape myrtles with their purplish-black foliage. They would look striking against a lighter colored wall and they don't get too large. To give you an idea of the many kinds of crape myrtles available, I'm going to link the page of the Crape Myrtle Trails of McKinney, TX, which is my favorite website for Crape Myrtle information. I haven't tried Rose of Sharon on the west side of the house, but it probably would be alright. I have several kinds of hardy hibiscus in the border around our large veggie garden and they are both heat tolerant and drought tolerant. They are growing in heavily amended clay in raised beds, but there's a couple of smaller ones at the lower north end of our heavily sloping garden and they are equally heat and drought tolerant, growing at grade level in soil only lightly amended. Another perennial flower (often considered a reseeding annual, but perennial in my garden) that doesn't mind the west side of a building is tall verbena, Verbena bonariensis. It is one of the most heat-tolerant and drought-tolerant plants I've ever grown and is a real butterfly magnet. I use lots of autumn sage (Salvia greggii) plants as they tolerate heat and plentiful sunshine. They are perennials and are semi-evergreen. Sometimes they bloom on and off throughout the winter here in zone 7b. I just shear them back pretty hard right before new growth begins in early Spring to keep them more compact and more manageable. There's tons of options for the west side of a house. Just avoid things like hydrangeas that must have afternoon shade in our climate and avoid plants that need perfect drainage. Good luck, and if you have more questions, I hope you'll ask them. Also, watch for the Master Gardener's plant sale in your county, which has a very active MG group that puts on a great plant sale in the Spring. This year's plant sale is May 11th. More info about it can be found on the website linked below. Pottawatomie County Extension Service Webpage The Master Gardeners have a display garden at the ag extension building and you might visit it to get some ideas. Dawn

What you say about "end(ing) up with something that looks like the surrounding countryside that you didn't do anything to . . .pretty futile" is an interesting comment. I visited a show on the history of land use at the Museum of New Hampshire History on Wed. One of the points made was that the white settlers felt they were within their rights in taking much of the land the Indians (Native Americans)claimed because the Indians had not changed the land enough to make it theirs. Had not cut down the forests, farmed the land, made roads, and so on. Their European ethic was that to "own" the land, you must change it appreciably. Not so different, on a deep level, from what we do today. Planting all natives may feel like we are not changing the land appreciably; it doesn't look enough like we have "done" enough to make it ours.. I remember seeing a slide show several years ago that accompanied a lecture by a developer who had designed suburban cluster homes leaving nearly all of the trees, dividing up the lots and laying out the driveways to maximize privacy and minimize damage to the land. I agreed with the design principles, but the outcome was unsettling; the road through the development looked like a lonely road thru the woods; the houses were dark and in deep shadows as they were surrounded by tall trees, small holes having been cut out of the forest to put the houses down on. It seemed rather gloomy and isolated. I think a great many of us need to see evidence that the land has been changed by our hands in order to feel comfortable aesthetically. I plant natives and encourage others to do so to for many reasons. Also plant and love introduced plants. G.