I ordered last year: *Cinderella fairy tale - this has become really big and wide and flowered best in spring with sporadic repeats after that. * Pomponella- is growing quite strongly and flowers constantly *Flamingo- I like it better than Bride's Dream or Royal Highness. I think it's the perfect bride's bouquet flower. All the bareroot plants were HUGE. I advise any west coast gardeners to order in Fall because they don't always have enough orders to send out a shipment to the west coast in Jan-Feb. at least that was what they told me last year. Also, there are issues with cold weather in the East spoiling the plants during transit. Then you might have to wait until later when it's past the optimum planting time. I find my bareroots don't take off as well here in April as they did in the first months of the year. The shipping is expensive, but wait until you see your plants!

I have no idea if all of mine are good butterfly plants, but I ordered them because I think they're so pretty in the pictures on the website I was looking at. I ordered mine from swallowtailgardenseeds.com Band of Nobles Mixed Lupine Little Treasure Deep Rose Wall Rock Cress Arizona Sun Gaillardia Southern Charm Verbascum Sorbet Black Delight Viola Blue Angel Viscaria Serena Mix Angelonia Marine Heliotrope Bravo Mix Brachycome House's Hybrids Scabiosa Moon Vine I want to also order a few from Prairie Moon Nursery... New Jersey Tea Wild Lupine I have to look through their selection and see if there's anything else I might want. I ordered those two things two other times and they've proven difficult for me to start here. The New Jersey Tea is an extremely slow grower. Not all of mine made it through last winter and I ended up with 7 out of the 11 that I planted. Last year our weather was so hot and dry that they didn't do so well and so I don't know if I'll end up with any out of the 2 dozen that I planted in the late summer. They weren't more than about an inch high. I don't know what I can do differently for those plants, but I'm going to add even more sand and leaves to my lupine section and see if that helps. I have lots of sand, leaves and potting soil in the Russell lupine bed that I've had here for a couple of years and they're doing great. You'd think that the wild ones would do better than the Russell ones, but they haven't so far for me even though I thought that I already had enough things added to the soil. I am going to winter sow all of my seeds (started but not done) since I've had great success with it over the past several years since I started doing it. I just have to not go crazy and start about 100 jugs of plants like I did before; it's so much to plant and it takes me until the end of the summer to plant all of them. I always love looking at the seed/plant catalogs this time of the year. I can kind of transport myself out of this awful winter. Cathy

I wasnt worried about the postage, you didnt need to send it to me, honest ! I would of said something but it was only a few cents ! Alana, I DID want the swap to be ALL 2008 seeds, and thought that was reflected in my first post, BUT then I got an envelop with mostly 2007...To be fair to the person I used some, and sent some back, as I KNEW the seeds would be viable, and I didnt want to disappoint anyone on a misunderstanding. If I do this next year, I will definately make sure everyone realizes the guidelines a bit better. This was my first time, and I made a few mistakes..I did talk with a few other people that have done tons of RR to ask how to handle a few things...so I followed some good advice. Thanks again for joining ...and I hope for the most part everyone is happy...

I noted two listings in the SSE catalog......one for Big Boy and one for Big Zac. I was under the impression that only open pollinated varieties were listed there and still think that is true but not sure why these two varieties are listed. The descriptions for both are brief and do not state whether they are stabilized versions of the original hybrid or just completely different varieties with similiar names. Thoughts??? ***** Jay, those two particular ones have been in the Yearbooks for a long time and my assumption has always been that they are OP derivatives. If you have any questions you can always contact the lister. ****** Jay (who spent the day looking at old posts from a few years ago from GW and realized that I owe some well known folks here many apologies for rediculous behavior on my part...namely Carolyn Male, Craig Lehoullier and Hortist as well as the folks who had to suffer reading my dribble when I posted as Scott_inTexas) ***** Jay, aka Scott, which I prefer calling you since that's how I first knew you, just forget the past. Yes, there were problems, yes there were misinterpretations, and more, but I like the new Jay much better than I did the old Scott, that's for sure. ( smile) Carolyn