Nice list, thanks! I have a dog, so the indoor plants I have are nontoxic: an african violet, a nontoxic fern, culinary herbs in hubby's Aerogarden, and a goldfish plant (which I love!! It is so cool looking.) Used to have a Persian violet which was fabulous and fragrant-- smelled great for about 2 months, but it eventually finished flowering, sickened and died. It was replaced by the goldfish plant.

"If you think soapy water will do the job; if you think hand-picking is adequate; if you think good rose culture will do the job; if you think milky spore is the answer, actually, if you think anything at all is the answer; then you may have japanese beetles but you don't have JAPANESE BEETLES. I couldn't have said it any better. I don't like spraying insecticides but when it comes to Japanese Beetles it is either spray the BAYER or resign yourself to not having any roses during the summer. Soapy water?! What a joke. Here is a link that might be useful: Japanese Beetle feeding frenzy

thanks for the correction, esh! my apologies on the confusion w/ vitex and buddleia, huge mistake on my part! i get tangled up with scientific names vs. common names. (thank goodness this is the internet, lest i'd dread trying to pronounce 'quercifolia'!) my 'coppertina' probably doesn't get enough sun, in fact, i don't think it gets more than an hour or two of filtered evening sun, if that. i must say, though, i noticed while taking the photos that the colors really didn't come through (lighting, flash, etc.) it's definitely got a distinctively copper/bronze color towards the peripheral, with more of a green/copper variance near the core. note the single flower shoot near the bottom of the photo - amplify the coloring there 3x or 4x; that is the approximate color right now. the 'summer wine' is definitely a deep burgundy reminiscent of purple shiso (which is popping up everywhere in my beds) or petra basil right now as well. they are just starting to bud and flower. and i'm hoping the colors will be much more pronounced in a few weeks, since most of this is new growth for the year. i remember when we picked up the plants last season, the 'coppertina' literally looked so deep in color that i thought it was fake/spraypainted. :) oh, and those are hydrangea quercifolia - they were also picked up from GNPS swap, along with some foam flower (which i would love to find more of right now). the hydrangeas were marked 'snow queen' when we got them, i have seen a couple of varieties, so i guess it would be important to give this info. i've never grown from cuttings, but i probably should give that a shot this year. of the three hydrangeas i have on that side of the house, an entire half of one died (i posted a thread about it here recently), and in the photo with the coppertina above, you'll if you look at the hydrangea bloom to the left, you should notice that it's the only one that hasn't really been opening up, and all of the leaves around it are wilted; this is what happened with the last one - that half of the hydrangea is dying, and the other half (same root ball) is doing superb. i don't get it...it's almost like something attacked that particular stem, it goes limp, it goes firm, it goes limp, and sometimes it eventually dies. i suspected heat, but it did this through winter also. i suspected root rot, but this area gets watered all the same (infrequently) and holds moisture well...very strange.

I am on the 8b/9a border, and a few of those suggested plants are very iffy for winter survival here: bougainvillea, ponytail palm, jatropha, and plumeria are all likely to die without significant winter protection. However, you can overwinter a potted plumeria in a dormant state in a cool, dark (but not above-freezing) location such as a garage. Potted ponytail palms can be easily overwintered in the house, since they are happy in the dry heat. There are also many plants on that list that will reliably survive the winter, but will defoliate or even die back to the ground in the cold. Some of them are plants that are evergreen in central/south Florida (hibiscus, passion vine, etc.). You asked for perennials, so maybe you don't mind winter die-back, but I thought I'd mention it. If you want something evergreen to add some height and structure, you can use Indian hawthorn (as Carol mentioned above) or ligustrum. For a deciduous shrub or small tree, crepe myrtles (mentioned above) are great. If you get a bigger type and let it keep most of its crown growth (no coppice pruning, a.k.a. "crepe murder") it will eventually make a nice tree and give you a partly-shaded area to plant under. Knockout roses (mentioned above) grown in full sun will reach 5'-6' or more in a couple of years if you don't cut them back too aggressively. If you keep them cut back, you can maintain them at 3'-4'. They will defoliate briefly in the coldest part of winter, but generally don't drop their leaves until the hard freezes hit - so often they are green past Christmas. For edible landscaping, the blueberry bush (decidious) can be attractive. It has white flowers in spring, of course followed by the tasty berries. The dwarf Sunshine Blue only gets 2'-4' tall and has pink flowers. Blueberries love sun, but you have to maintain an acid soil. For an unusual color on a bigger shrub - IF you are willing to mulch very well and water regularly - loropetalum will do great in full sun. It has beautiful purple foliage and the brilliant pink flowers in spring are a bonus. My next door neighbor has some beautiful ones, and there are several apartment complexes and shopping centers that also have lovely ones that get all day sun. I am not kidding about the mulch and water, though - they will die or look terrible if you stick them in full sun without adequate mulch and moisture, and I'd wait until fall to plant them. They will need the cool months to get their root systems established before facing the heat next summer. Their foliage is much denser if grown in full sun, dense enough that they can be pruned into shapes - rounded top shapes are popular around here. The native saw palmetto or the king sago (cycas revoluta, which I believe Carol mentioned above) can be an effective backdrop or centerpiece for your perennial flowers, too. They are almost bulletproof. Ornamental sweet potatoes are a pretty ground cover to weave among your flowers. While they are not supposed to be hardy, mine have come back after the last two winters. Mine are out in the brick mailbox planter exposed to dawn to dusk sun along the street. However, the grocery store sweet potatoes I planted with them (some that had sprouted after I failed to cook them soon enough) have grown even more vigorously. I leave them in the ground all winter. One last thought: I bought some pretty purple African Daisies from HD this spring. They have done really well, repeatedly blooming in sun and poor soil with no deadheading. They were labeled as perennials, but since I just got them this year I can't report on their actual hardiness yet. Good luck!