Just be aware that if you want lilacs for scent, the Jap. TL has none, although it is usually very floriferous. Look up the various species of Syringa, and the various hybrids and see which ones have characteristics you want, and then start looking for plants. If it's unusual, you may need to get it by mail-order (on-line-order?). It may be that your local nurseries won't have them now; I've noticed that many plants are in stock just before or as they flower, and then aren't around for the rest of the year. I guess it makes sense as many people tend to buy somewhat on impulse, and most nurseries have only so much display space. Since you can plant potted plants almost any time of the year, if you are willing to water them well, and baby them through the summer, you could take your list of desired lilacs to a good local nursery and ask if they can find them for you now. It might cost you a little more, but supplying plants IS their business, after all. If you want to wait, you could ask for the nursery to find them in the fall. Or, you could use the summer to find on-line sources, and order the trees you want for fall planting. Just be aware that many mail-order plants are smaller than you can get at a nursery, due to shipping costs and cares in packing.

Conifornia: I was waiting for someone from your own area with a litle more day-to-day experience with redwoods to reply, but seeing your post hanging out here for a while, I will help as best I can. I have always been fascinated by the redwoods and have visited the parks often. OK, as for your damaged little guy. If the bark has been stripped off all the way around and all the way to the cambium layer, the top will die. But sometimes when bark is "stripped," it is not completely stripped, in spite of appearances. Sometimes a thin layer of inner bark is left, and if enough of this is left--something like half way around, the bark will re-grow, the little trunk will "heal," and the tree will be fine. Maybe a close examination can tell you if what you see is indeed exposed sapwood where the buck rubbing was done, or if there is a substantial area where there is some residual bark. If the top has been stripped so it will die, redwood trees are prolific sprouters, both from cut stumps, and from trunks stripped of foliage. Redwood is unlike most conifers in this respect. So if the top dies or is so clearly completely stripped of bark that you decide to cut it off, the tree will sprout from the trunk below the damaged area and re-grow rather rapidly. As for deer protection? What are you doing? How did this buck get to your tree? I make cages about 3 1/2 feet in diameter out of the heavier grade of woven cattle fencing. I secure it with either stout metal fence posts, or by placing heavy rocks on the bottom rung of the wire. Very rarely does a buck manage to rip this away and get to a protected tree--it may have happened once in 30 years of my experience with several hundred protected trees. I keep my trees protected until they are between 4 and 5 inches in diameter. I wish I could grow redwoods here! I do have a young giant sequoia, however. It is now large enough to go unprotected! --Spruce

The main concern would be what if any elevation change between your planting site and where they are being grown. They are perfectly cold hardy to those low temps, but if grown in different conditions and they are leafed out and further along in spring growth the new foliage could get some freezer burn. Then you will be coming back and asking what is wrong with my brand new trees. The leaves are turning brown. That is not the best way to start a new plant in life. Ask the person planting the trees if they can handle the light freeze in their current state of growth.

Hydrangea are not trees botanically but sub shrub they have soft-ish wood which ages badly and -good news- have the ability to regrow from dormant buds and shoots from the base so it should be ok to cut above all sprouting eyes. to trim a sub shrub as a tiny standard tree goes against their nature, they tend to regrow and re-juvenate frome the base. so I personally would regrow it as shrub and then just keep pruning it in intervealls, good luck, Lin edited to ad: one way to properly prune Hydrangea paniculata ist to cut back most of the old growth in spring