roseyp8255, Everblooming (aka, Veitchii) is supposed to be a prolific bloomer and, as long as its needs are met in terms of climate, temp changes, humidity then it will be "Everblooming" and re-bloom its head off. Luckily, your state is one of those places where that is possible. August Beauty is another heavy bloomer for me but less so than Veitchii during the summer/fall time frame. Here in Texas, I get a limited-to-no bloom production in the summer/fall because the temps are in too high of a range and bud production requires certain ranges that we just cannot normally attain. But Everblooming has had "more" re-blooms than some of the other varieties that I have. Perhaps bud production is triggered at higher temps for Veitchii. By the way, good news from Texas! I added four more gardenias to my list of those that are coming back. Because the leaves are mostly coming out from the base of the plant, they all got a serious haircut (most are 3" high now). Obviously, I do not expect any flowers this year. If the plants can just use the time leafing out and working on their roots, that will be fine with me. You now... tt seems as if the talk that I had with them a week ago convinced them that it may be a good thing to finally leaf out. That is one reason why I always like to wait until mid-May before taking any drastic action. The hot season in Texas starts sometime in May so, if a plant does not at least leaf out by mid-month, it may have a hard time the rest of the summer. I did an unscientific study of last winter temps and determined that last winter was rather warm with hardly any freezing or sub-freezing temps at night. I theorize that the plants did not get hardened off / prepared for the sudden cold snowy day that we had in late December. And even though it was only one day of 30 degree temps & it snowed only 1/2 inch (the total for the whole winter), it just caught them quite unprepared.

Bragu, I beg to differ. They don't need 50+ days of sub 30 degree weather to go dormant. That doesn't happen here in San Jose, California. They need about 6 weeks of nighttime temps below 40 to stay dormant. We hit the 50's-60's during the daytime Winter months. We didn't drop below 32 degrees this year and my hostas in pots in bark are going gangbusters. I've been growing them since the late 1990's. It's been my observation that they go dormant due to the changes in daylight hours. Keeping them dormant (and dry-ish)until they wake up in Spring is the key. I totally agre that the soil makes the difference. They will do fine for a year or two in potting soil (I even used 1/2 potting soil and 1/2 perlite for a couple years but it packed down and all the perlite floated to the top. messy). I've found that mini-bark with just a few scoopfulls of organic compost works well, retaining some moisture, but allows the water to flow freely thru the pot, even after a couple years. Diluted liquid fert supplies the nutrients, so does,as some have suggested, a few tablespoons/or handfulls of manure on top of the bark, depending on the size of the pot. -Babka

Karen's husband Larry sent me the following, "Of the 51 plants she had, about 48 have survived. I keep them watered and weeded. There are more than 20 clusters of blooms right now. Each morning when I open the drapes, I think of her calling me to see the latest activity. I think she is nurturing them from above and thanking all of the forum members who helped her. Last year when she saw them last, they were 3 -4 feet tall. Now there are several more than 6 ft tall."

Update: most of my roses are here and ready to go in (hopefully next week). I ended up with: MAC ZD (for porch front and side) GT (for the side of the house, next to ZD) JtheO Comtes de Champagne Peace Sharifa Asma Stanwell Perpetual New Dawn (to train into a tree in the yard) Anne Hathaway Paul Shirville Apothecary's Rose and Alba Semiplena for the herb garden I'm still waiting to find Bolero, which sounds very promising, and Evelyn, which I might keep in a pot to see how it does. Most of the others will be planted in a circle around a small fountain at the front of the house. I'm planning to put MAC at the back; my vision is to have it growing fairly tall to screen our bay window, and to fan out on the sides (assuming i can convince it to do so) to achieve the look of an arching fountain of blooms. Here's my question: I ordered two MACs. Would I be crazy to plant them next to each other to get a more "fountainy" look? I don't know if they will achieve the monstrous proportions here in NJ that I see in pics from CA. Am I better off putting the second one on the other side of the tree with New Dawn, or somewhere else altogether?