Rouge - I saw your question on mxk3's old post re our replacement Wolf Eyes planted by the pine stump..... I thought I'd reply in a separate thread so as not to confuse that thread :-)

The replacement Wolf Eyes has done well so far. We didn't do a lot of watering through this summer's drought but we did try to remember to water that tree - and the stump too. Here's what it looks like as of this morning:

I don't intend to do any winter protection. By the time the white pines finish dropping their 2-year-old needles, the white ash drops all its leaves, and we rake all the needles and leaves from the paths and the back lawn into the beds, there will be a thick layer of natural mulch there. The odd thing about this Wolf Eyes is that it doesn't yet have the very tiered branch structure that dogwoods usually do. That should develop as it gets bigger I think. Our previous one had longer branches when we planted it compared to the branches on this one and it did take a few years before it started to look tiered. This is what the first one looked like :

So this new one is definitely starting with a narrower profile! This one was a potted plant and the previous one was ball-and-burlap, so was probably a bit more mature.

I don't protect my JMs in any way either. Anything that dies didn't belong here! :-) There's a really nice young JM on the neighbour's property you can see through the fence in the top picture above. It was a seedling that popped up near our patio the first year we were here. I dug it up and planted it in the back corner. At that time there were no fences between the properties so we were guessing where the property line was! When we finally had a survey cone before putting up the fence (to keep our dog on our side...!) it turned out that the seedling tree (and a few other things...) were on their side! Since the seedling probably came from their Bloodgood JM (which had died by the time the fence went up....) we left the tree for them - and we enjoy it through the fence :-)

The house on the other side of that neighbour has an incredibly beautiful JM in the front. The house was sold about two years ago and we were afraid it would be a teardown , which would kill the JM. The neighbour next door had been doing some lawn maintenance while the house was empty, so I asked him to rescue some seedlings if he saw any! He gave me several. Most have died (or I've forgotten where I put them!) This is the only survivor I can see:

This is what the 'mother' tree looks like when the color changes:

Maybe someday the little seedling will look something like that....! :-)