Nice for the cactus perhaps... Normally it flowers in one burst in August or thereabouts even though it has buds from when it comes out of dormancy, but this year I'll give it a couple of flowers for possible identification and perhaps cut and dust the rest -- I really want it building its strength for its first winter outside the (out)house. It's also been wrong-footed from the start of the year, since the cloudy cold snap quickly gave way to sunny early summer and sunburn has been a problem for the first time (you can probably see from the spines that it's used to a lot). It should fade, but I've read somewhere on the CactiGuide forums that it takes weeks for Echinopsis to recover. Haven't been able to find much other info on it, as usually by the time people take photos and put them online the damage is more severe. The supports were necessary mainly because the cactus goes down almost as much as it goes up, tapering to the point from which the roots originate. Quite fascinating, but there's no way it could have been set down while I filled the pot.

Here are the lists I promised. This is from the Smith County (Smith County and is about 90 mi. east if Dallas) Extention service trials about 10 years ago. Smith county is in East Texas and is not as dry as the DFW area, but just as hot. I think it's 7b. Everything shifts when I post this. It's copied from a PDF, but you will be able to see the results, but it won't stay in columns. The hosta were evaluated by master gardeners in June, August, October and then averaged. There was a problem with the irrigation system in an area so �So Sweet�, �Sugar & Cream�, �Royal Standard�, and �Albo-Marginata� didn't get sufficient water. NAME DATE AVERAGE June August October Blue Angel 9.8 8.8 10 9.5 Sugar & Cream 9.2 9.4 9 9.2 Blue Cadet 8.7 8.8 10 9.2 Francee 6.0 8.8 10 8.3 Gold Standard 6.3 7.6 10 8.0 Honeybells 7.1 8.8 8 8.0 So Sweet 9.4 5.6 8.5 7.8 Royal Standard 7.4 9 7 7.8 Lancifolia 7.3 7.8 8 7.7 Grand Tiara 7.8 7.2 7 7.3 Albo-Marginata 7.6 5.8 7 6.8 September Sun 6.2 7 7 6.7 Sun Power 6.8 6.8 6 6.5 Elegans 6.0 7.4 6 6.5 Emerald Tiara 7.8 7.2 4 6.3 Patriot 4.6 6.2 7 5.9 Bold Ribbon 6.5 6.8 3 5.4 Guacamole 6.7 5.4 4 5.4 Gold Edger 7.1 6 3 5.4 Fragrant Bouquet 5.1 4.8 6 5.3 Sagae 5.2 4.6 6 5.3 Shade Fanfare 5.5 4.6 3 4.4 Summer Music 3.8 2.8 6 4.2 Undulata 6.3 3 3 4.1 Temple Bells 6.1 3.2 3 4.1 Krossa Regal 4.2 3.8 4 4.0 Resonance 4.3 5.2 2 3.8 H. fortunei 'Aureo Marginata' 4.3 3 2 3.1 Aphrodite 3.5 2.4 3 3.0 Colossal 4.3 2.6 2 3.0 Fried Green Tomatoes 3.8 3.4 1 2.7 Invincible 4.5 2.6 1 2.7 Halcyon 2.8 2.8 2 2.5 Big Daddy 2.3 2.8 1 2.0 Daybreak 1.7 2.4 2 2.0 Sum & Substance 2.1 1.8 2 2.0 Hadspen Heron 1.5 1 1 1.2 *Master Gardeners were asked to rank each variety from 1 to 10, with 1 = worst/almost dead, and 10 = outstanding in every way. These are the recommended varieties from a trial at the Dallas Arboretum. There is also a large trial in progress right now. I can hardly wait to see how they look this spring. Invincible (plantaginea Hybrid) Sugar & Cream (Honeybell sport) Dixie Chick (Invincible x Masquerade) Abba Ready Sweet Standard (Honeybell sport) Emily Dickinson (plantaginea hybrid) Potomac Pride (H. 'Blue Umbrellas' x H. yingeri 'Treasure Island' cross) Plantaginea Honeybells Royal Standard Regal Splendor (Krossa Regal sport) Krossa Regal Francee So Sweet (Green with cream edge- compact) Blue Cadet (Blue green medium) Patriot September Sun (Chartreuse green/yellow with dark green edge) The going theory is that certain "families" of hosta do better in warmer areas, which makes sense. If the parent plants are from warmer climates, then you would think that the progeny would do better in warm climates. It was explained to me that some varieties pass on their heat tolerance better than others. Sill, I don't think you can go wrong with anything fragrant, which comes from plantaginea. This is a recommended list: The families of hostas that do well in southern gardens are: clausa gracillima kikutii longpipes montana Nakaiana plantaginea rupifraga sieboldii some species tibae ventricosa venusta yingeri nakaiana How I tell the parentage is to look it up on the Hosta library http://www.hostalibrary.org/. Then say you are interested in what "so sweet" looks like. Look in the S's on the hosta library. On the left above the first photos is a link to the the myhosta.net database. It will usually tell you how large the plant will be and what the parents are. Sometimes, they are many generations removed and this is no longer relevent, though. Good Luck, I'm not sure when the trial at the Dallas Arboretum concludes. However, when it does, I'll post the results. bkay

Yeah, I can appreciate too much of anything is not the best. My DH gardened up in MA for his whole life. He was used to things taking full sun there. He was not concerned either about not air conditioning his house, because the hot season lasted such a brief time. Now he is here in Alabama full time, and I cringe when I see him locating seedlings from his veggie garden in full sun. Like the artichokes he planted for me. He starts the seedlings and then I help him locate a good spot. Presently he is on a mission to remove camphor tree roots and old azalea roots from a long wide flower bed near the street. He had to stop because the soil was too wet down a foot or so, for him to use the SawzAll (reciprocating saw) to cut the huge roots.(It rained two days ago) But once that bed is clear, I am looking forward to adding hosta IN THE GROUND to that spot. Beneath the palm trees. Near the banana trees. He said it was a lot cooler at that end of the bed than the end near the street with day lilies, which tends to be drier as well as more exposed to the western sun. I suppose every small bit of land has microclimates that welcome a diverse group of plants.

Ashley, The photos you like are from a yard in Long Island, New York, so the plants, while very lovely, don't have to deal with the same harsh summer conditions we have here. (Their "hot" is not even the same as our "hot" even though we all are in zone 7.) Just thought I'd throw that in because often we admire yards from other parts of the country, but sometimes we can't use some of those plants here in our climate or they bloom earlier in our climate and all are not in bloom together. Also, the landscapes in the photos you like were done by a person who is a garden designer and, yes, the design is amazing, as you'd expect from someone who designs gardens. : ) First of all, you need to figure out what kind of soil you have---clay, sand, sandy loam, silt, etc. because the kind of soil you have will help determine what you can grow. I would guess you have sandy loam or clayey loam but I'm just guessing. Secondly, even more importantly, you need to know if your soil is alkaline or acidic. Some parts of Oklahoma have extremely alkaline soil, some have acidic soil, and some have soil that is close to neutral. Different plants grow well in soils with different pH factors, so figure out your soil pH before you start to plant. From looking at the photo of your home, which I've linked below for other folks so it is easier to view, it looks like your beds are not very deep. How deep are they? Three feet? Four feet? More? As small as the beds are, you will have to select smaller plants or the beds will get too crowded very quickly and will look too "busy". Or, if you want to have a lot of plants, you could enlarge the beds before you try to plant too much. You also have to be careful and select smaller plants until your shrubs get some height to them or the taller flowers will shade out parts of the shrubs which can lead to uneven growth and a mis-shapen form. Take Malva "Zebrina", for example. Just a couple of months after planting, one plant can be 3 feet wide or wider and 3 to 4 feet tall and it would overwhelm the small shrubs. I use a lot of Malva "Zebrina" and hollyhocks, for example, but I have a two story house so I have deeper beds--some of mine are 12'-15' deep (deep meaning horizontally wide, not soil that deep), so I have the space in front of taller shrubs to plant taller flowers. You don't have that sort of space in your current beds, though, so you have to be careful in selecting taller flowers. Unless the beds are deeper than they appear to be in the photo, the following plants on your list would tend to get too large for the space you have: four o'clocks, tall phlox, tall cannas (you might be able to grow the dwarf cannas but you'll probably have to dig and divide them every year to get them from taking over the shrubs' space), hibiscus, Russian Sage (there is at least one named dwarf Russian sage that doesn't get as large as the others and it might be a possibility) and maybe Autumn Sage. You can't have hostas on the south side of your house because they need shade and would struggle in the hot July and August sun without a lot of shade. You don't want chameleon plant because it is very invasive. I don't know about silver lace vine on the south side of a house. It is not crazy about our summers and normally does best on the east or north side of a house where it has some protection from the summer sun and the southerly winds that are so dominant during the hot months. These plants are good candidates for your beds, but not too many of them unless you enlarge the beds: Globe Amaranth Gazania Daisies Cosmos (the dwarf ones only, like Cosmic Orange or Cosmic Red or Cosmic Yellow or the dwarf Lady Bug line because some of the taller ones would get 4' to 5' or taller and overwhelm the shrubs) Stonecrop Hardy Ice Plant (only if you have well-drained soil) Yarrow Lantana (not generally reliably hardy in zone 7, but sometimes comes back for 2, 3 or 4 years if the soil drains well and the winters are kind) Verbena (the perennial ones can spread out 4' wide but the annuals stay manageable) Daylily (if carefully selected and placed--some of them get huge too, so you'd want smaller ones) Zinnias (choose the smaller ones (height-wise) like the Dreamland or Magellan or Zahara series that get maybe 12" to 16" high. Some zinnias get 4' tall or taller and about as wide and they'd be too large for your current beds) If you are doing to put a bed on the west side of the house that would be 4' to 5' wide, you could fill it with flowers and many of the ones you listed--both tall and short ones--would be great for a location like that where you don't have to worry about the flowers burying the slower growing shrubs. So, if you are going to keep the beds their current size, I'd go with smaller, shorter plants like gazanias or blanket flowers for the first couple of years in order to give the shrubs time to gain a little height after width. After that, you can carefully add some of the taller plants you like, but slowly and in moderation so the bed won't be overfilled. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: