Oh my. What is a passionate rose lover like you doing in that glacial hell hole? Reading about your endeavors has exhausted me and I haven't even lifted a shovel. I admire your grit and determination, but would love to see you rewarded with thousands of blooms on your rose bushes for all your hard work. I bet they could use engineers in zones 7 to 10!

I live in Utah zone 6b - 7a fluctuations. Last winter I grew a 6 inch tall tiny 'Prague' chimera citrus outdoors in-ground in a micro climate next to the south wall of my house. Temperatures dropped as low as 15 F. This tree was heavily mulched with wood chips and caged in poultry wire with a plastic tarp wrapped around it. From December 20 to Jan 15 I surrounded the cage with old milk jugs that were repeatedly warmed in the micro-wave around midnight any-time temperatures dropped below 20F. Not only did the 'Prague' tree survive the winter without defoliation but the citrus has tripled in size this year of 2022. Additionally I grew a 2 foot tall 'Nippon' orange-quat with the same procedure and the Nippon pushed out beautiful new growth last spring and is fruiting for me this year although it suffered some defoliation and 1/3 of the old leaves look damaged. I was able to harvest some fruit from 'Nippon' last December and successfully germinated a dozen seeds. Additionally both of these trees have survived summer temperatures up to 107F. The Nippon suffered some scorch in the most exposed leaves. I intend to continue growing 'Prague' and 'Nippon' citrus tree in the ground and espalier them against my home each winter as they mature. Due to my recent success I intend to also try a very cold hardy tangerine hybrid the same way. All of these citrus are grafted to Poncirus 'Flying Dragon' root stock. Good Luck Howard! Most of the folks bragging about growing a citrus tree in a cold zone are from zone 8 so I think growing citrus in the ground outdoors in zone 6or 7 takes effort and is something to be proud of. Keep trying! You will figure something out.

bboy: you're not listening to me. I wouldn't care if it said I'm in zone 10 because I've had plants such as the Frost Proof Gardenia die in my zone despite them saying they're hardy in zone 7. Therefore I'm trying to be a bit more conservative and find plants that say they're hardy to zone 6 so I can stop killing plants and wasting money. Obviously something about where I live is tough on plants (I'm at 500' elevation and much of Puyallup is much lower elevation, those maps aren't going to take that into consideration so relying completely on those maps doesn't make sense). gardengal: I'm really glad you brought up Daphne x transatlanica 'Summer Ice' or 'Eternal Fragrance', I planted both of these last fall, they have both lost most of their leaves, not sure if I should worry about this as I've had this happen sometimes with Daphne Odora yet had them leaf out in the summer. I'll look into D. tangutica or xburkwoodii 'Carol Mackie' or 'Somerset', not familiar with those at all, thanks for the suggestion.

thanks for the recs, I coulda just googled the usda hardiness zone and found many options but I know for example like dogwoods are recently not doing to well in this zone (something with a beatle or something like that) but I will search each type further. Now I think I'm going to actually just plant like 7 different types of trees in between the arboorvitaes! Sounds wrong but I have seen many examples of similar, and it looks cool, also what's good is that for example arborvites sometimes can get snow damaged (limbs break under weight) and if you have a 20 year old screen of them and one gets beat up, you might want to replace it and might be hard to find the exact type and especially size and could be pricey. With using different types, if something dies or gets beat up it can just be replaced. I think I'll try an aprocot tree (have seen one doing well in the area) and a few other evergreen columnars/semi columnar.