TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A PLANT AHOLIC OK Prairiemoon2 here is a slightly abbreviated list of what I brought home yesterday from Avant Gardens. Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Ceramic' A miniature Golden Hinoki Cypress. aka Golden Ceramic, and Lynns Golden. Tight undulating golden evergreen fronds slowly form a darling miniature sculpture. New! Chamaecyparis psifera 'Tsukumo' A miniature bun-shaped evergreen with fine textured fern-like blue-green foliage. Cryptomeria japonica 'Tansu' This miniature evergreen reminds one of a sea urchin with its textural spiny green foliage. Slow-growing, it ultimately forms a 15' mound, and therefore is good in troughs.New! Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Gold Fern' A unique form of Hinoki Cypress displaying golden fern-like juvenile foliage on a mounding compact shrub. We found the foliage color is best in part shade. Growth rate is slow, only 3" or so a year. Ultimately a shrub of 4' x 4' Ilex crenata 'Jersey Pinnacle' Valuable for it's upright, dense, yet irregularly branched habit and it's glossy dark green evergreen foliage. 6-8'. Magnolia grandiflora 'Edith Bogue' Considered the most cold hardy of the evergreen magnolias, 'Edith Bogue' has survived -24° F albeit with some defoliation. It has a tight pyramidal form, reaching 40' or more with a width of 15' and narrow, lustrous dark green leaves with brown undersides. In June and July, the creamy 9-12" blossoms fill the air with a sweet, lemony fragrance. Hydrangea anomeles petiolaris 'Miranda' Description: Hydrangea petiolaris 'Miranda' is a new variegated selection of the popular Climbing Hydrangea. Leaves have a gold margin in the spring that fades to creamy white as the season progresses. White Lace cap type flowers. Bark has an interesting exfoliating quality. Slower growing than the species. Zone: 4 Code: hydapm Exposure: sun/pt shade Sedum telephium 'Bon Bon' Pink flower clusters and chocolate colored fleshy foliage adorn tidy 16" clumps. Blooms Aug-Sept. Plant in poor soil and full sun for best results. New! Sedum sieboldii October Daphne. A tidy blue gray hardy succulent with rounded foliage on sprawling wiry stems. The leaves take on pink tones when the cold weather arrives, which compliment the clusters of rosy blossoms in Oct. Prefers lean well drained soil. 6"H x 12"W Regularly $6.95 Sedum cauticola 'Lidakense' This Sedum forms compact mounds of rounded blue to bronzy-red foliage with terminal clusters of starry budded pink flowers in late summer. Sedum telephium 'Red Cauli' A compact sedum, smaller than Autumn Joy with bright red flower clusters above blue-grey, purple tinted fleshy foliage. 12" Sedum platycdus zone 4 sun/pt shade A distinctive Sedumthat forms rosettes of fleshy-blue-gray foliage that has delicately notched edges. Pale yellow flowers in summer on 4" plants. Slowly forms colonies to 15". Euphorbia amygdaloides robbiae Grow this Euphorbia in a protected site with well drained soil in sun or shade. It will reward you with handsome somewhat glossy evergreen daphne-like foliage and airy sprays of yellow green flowers in spring. Mulch in colder zones. Cunninghamia unicanaliculata- Known as Chinese Fir. Leaves are steele blue. Huge triangle leaves to 2 ½ inches long. Can take shade or full sun. This tree is in question by taxonomist. They believe it to be just a variation on the species cunninghamia. Zone 6 height and spread in ten years 12ft 8 ft. Acanthus spinosus Tha hardiest of the "Bear's Breaches", this bold accent plant has large shiny green thistle like foliage and 3' flower spikes with soft mauve blossoms. We have found that siting it in a well-drained protected spot and a winter mulch encourages blooming. Orostachys fimbriata A curiosity for the rock garden or troughs having narrow gray quilled succulent leaves with a purple flush. Chamaecyparis lawsoniana Treasure Island A yellow, miniature, globe of Port Orford Cedar. Found as a sport from Treasure Very tight little ball with yellow foliage. Found in Southern Holland by Wiel Linssen. Height and spread in ten years 1ft by 1 ft zone 5 part shade. Chamaecyparis obtuse Golden Sprite a miniature bun form of Hinoki Cypress with tiny golden yellow leaves on twisted stems. Height and spread in ten years 4" x 1 Chamaecyparis obtuse Emelie a miniature variety of Jap. Hinoki Cypress. Nice green foliage on a small bun shaped plant. Propogates well and looks great. Plant named in 2005 in loving memorie of Emelie Snyder, wife of Marvin Snyder ex-president of American Conifer Society. Height and spread in 10 years 10inches by 10 inches. Chamaecyparis obtuse Leperchaun A miniature variety of Jap Hinoki. Leaves emerald green and very small. Plant is a squatty conical form. Leaves have a tuft appearance. Plant found and introduced by JW Spingarn of Long Island NY. Height and spread in 10 years 1ft x 14 inches zone 5 The beginnings of a tender succulent collection that I wont embarrass my self further by listing. kt

Oops! We've been doing this for so long that I forgot to put in the directions & guidelines! The Swap is at Trinity Park in Ft Worth: From I30 on the western edge of downtown Ft Worth, go north on University & take the first right turn into the park. Follow the lane around til you see people & plants! We usually try to set up near the pavilions at the farthest part of the park, but sometimes those are occupied & we ad-lib. We start around 9 AM & stay as long as we want (usually around 1 PM we're all ready to take a nap...) You can bring a dish to share (see the trade thread). Guidelines are loose & general & commonsense: Don't take anything unless/until the person who brought it says you can. It has happened that people will think they've got a trade worked out before the swap, a pre-trade, but there's a misunderstanding about what each person actually has. Maybe your David Austin Rose is in a 1 gallon pot, & you think you're getting a 1-gallon apricot seedling for it, but it turns out that the apricot is an apple! or the apricot is a pit with a sprout emerging from it. If you don't want to complete the trade *for any reason*, all you have to do is say you don't want to complete the trade. If someone tells you, "I don't want to complete the trade", smile & say you're sorry, & trade your item to someone else. Do not bring sticks in dirt to the swap & claim that they're plants! This has only happened a couple of times, but it's not right, it's not nice, & if you do it, you have to leave the swap. (It's not likely that this will happen; we've all been trading for so many years that we take it for granted that nobody we know would do something like this.) Trade fairly. You can trade anything for anything you like, as long as both parties are in agreement; if you want to trade your cow for a package of magic beans, you may do so, but please do not try to make someone trade you their cow for your magic beans! We aren't doing the prize/gift drawing this year, but if you want to being a "prizelike" something to trade, please do so! Examples: garden art garden junk nice books pictures/drawings/illustrations clogs tools vases/decorative pots birdhouses etc. What have I forgotten? I know I've forgotten something... Somebody please remember it & add it to this thread!

Marti, my Shasta daisies look wilted too, but they're getting ready to die back for the winter anyway; just dig up the pitiful-looking plant, & the new owner will plant it, & the roots will send up a new crown in the spring. I have a few daisies that have given up the ghost, & the new crowns have emerged already! Remy, if you have enough of the lotion and/or shampoo if that's what it is (bad monitor, bad bad monitor!), I'd like to trade...something? anything? I did pot up another rose for you, looks like another, or maybe the same, China rose, but it's a freebie; it's a leetle feller & its leaves are yellow, don't know if something's wrong with it or if it's just going dormant early. I did find some red yucca seeds from this year & some bur oak acorns from 2012; I had hoped to grow a bur oak, but I can't keep the squirrels out of them!

Two days in and I'm slowly killing PK's Texas Columbine and I don't know how to make it better. It is losing it's pretty flowers and some of the leaves look like they are dry and crispy. It got rain on Saturday and sun on Sunday and then I noticed it was dropping it's flowers. So I moved it to the shade. It seems like the leaves look dry, even though the soil is moist (but not soaked). and I watered it a bit more yesterday, so the soil feels damp but not soaked. Could it be it doesn't like the wind? I really love it and want to save it. Any tips would be appreciated.