Hi Hergrammy - I'm in SW Missouri also. Our utility company gave away purple leaf sandcherries several years ago so I have five in my yard. Only one looks like a tree. The others formed more of a shrub and don't really have a good shape - sort of lop-sided. They do tolerate our heat and drought in the summer and I haven't had any trouble with disease(yet) but they get almost completely defoliated in the summer, then leaf out again and sometimes get defoliated a second time. My little crabapple looses it's leaves also. I don't have any experience with Jane magnolia but tried to grow Black Beauty sambucus and couldn't keep it alive. Do you like redbuds? There are different varieties of those including one with purple leaves. The green leafed ones seem a little tougher though. You could also plant a crape myrtle there if you pick one of the more cold hardy varieties. They're overused in the south so you will find some negative comments about them but it's easy to grow, heat/drought tolerant, and is long blooming. Please feel welcome to also ask about trees or any other gardening questions in the Ozarks Gardening forum here at Gardenweb. The people in that forum will have similar gardening conditions as you so it will be helpful to get their opinions as well. Here is a link that might be useful: Ozarks Region Gardening

Hi MT! Oh, gosh, thanks for the compliment that I "seem to know so much". I want you to know that I am rolling on the floor laughing because EVERYTHING I know I have learned the hard way by doing everything wrong and then having to educate myself to correct my errors!!!! Of course, experience is the best teacher, but it can be a painful (and expensive) one. Anyway, if we'd had an internet with something like Garden Web when I started gardening as a young adult in the 1970s, I think the learning experience would have been a lot less painful. LOL I'll try to come up with some suggestions for shade, but I don't have a lot of experience with shade, as we built our home in an old cow pasture in between two wooded areas, so I have almost all sun, except for the shade of the one large pecan tree in the front yard. I do have lovely natural wooded areas on some of our acreage, but the copperheads and rattlesnakes enjoy them more in the warm weather than I do. First, when you say you have shade, I don't know what kind of shade. Heavy shade? Dappled shade? Shade all day? Most of the day? For the sake of making a list of shade-loving shrubs, I'll assume you have fairly heavy shade all day long. Some good shrubs for shade are: Abelia grandiflora, aka Glossy Abelia: This is a graceful, arching, spreading shrub that will become about as wide as it is tall. It can grow in full sun to part shade, but I don't know if it will flower well if it is in heavy shade. The leaves are fairly small. It flowers in late spring to early summer, and the flowers are small, sort of tubular and white to pink. The old standard form gets about 6' tall and 6' wide. There are smaller dwarf varieties, like "Sherwoodii" and "Compacta" which eventually get about three feet tall. A taller one (3' to 5' when mature) that has really pretty purple flowers is "Edward Goucher". Abelia is considered semi-evergreen to evergreen. Oakleaf Hydrangea (Hyndrangea quercifolia). Different from most hydrangeas, this one has leaves shaped like an oak leaf. It will get about 6' tall and will eventually spread out that wide. It has lovely fall color, which is a bonus. It blooms in early summer. There are many cultivars in different sizes. It isn't truly evergreen, but its foliage and flowers will stay on the plant until mid-winter. Oregon Grape Holly (Mahonia aquifolium): One of my favorites for shade. It gets from 3 to 6 feet tall, and 3 to 4 or 5 feet wide. It has beautiful bluish-green evergreen foliage. It has lovely yellow blooms in the spring, and the berries are bluish-black. It is really prickly, so don't plant it too close to paths or play areas. English Boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) does better in our climate than Japanese (littleleaf) Boxwood. It is just your standard, compact green foundation shrub that has little pest and disease problems. Sometimes in very cold winter the foliage will turn brown, though, so that's a negative. It does need very well drained soil as it will drown and die if it sits in waterlogged soil for any length of time. There are many cultivars of English Boxwood available. Kerria aka Japanese Kerria (Kerri Japonica) is a lovely flowering shrub for shady sites. It prefers shady sites with rich, humusy soil. This is one of those shrubs that grows in an arching manner, so it needs room to spread out. You can't prune it tightly like you could Boxwood, for example. It blooms in spring and early summer. And it is prone to foliar dieases, so it needs good air circulation. It is deciduous. Possumhaw Holly (Ilex decidua). I have these everywhere on my property, from full sun to full shade. When mature they can get to be the size of a small tree...15 to 20 feet tall and spreading 5 to 10 or 15' wide. It is deciduous but has lovely berries that stay on the plant until mid- to late-winter. I think it will grow in any soil. There are many named cultivars. One of the prettiest is "Warren's Red" or "Warren Red". It has gorgeous red berries and lots of them. There are some dwarf and compact cultivars that stay much smaller. The birds love the berries. Southern Wax Myrtle (Myrica cerifera). Another of my faves. There is a standard version and a dwarf version, which is Myrica pussilla. Wax myrtles are in the same family as bayberry and the foliage has an attractive aroma sort of like bayberry. The standard wax myrtles can be pruned and limbed up like trees, which is how I treat mine, and the dwarf ones will top out at about five feet, while the standard ones can go to 15 or 20 feet. They are fairly fast-growing. The foliage is a light green that is almost a yellowish-green. I had to look for quite a while before I found some of them at a Lowe's, as they are not easy to find. Viburnum (Viburnum species) There are many cultivars available in many different sizes. Some are tall, some are short. Some are evergreen, some are deciduous. I have the common native Rusty Blackhaw Viburnum. Many named cultivars are available commecially. Spirea (Spiraea species) These are fairly compact shrubs, reaching from 2' to 6' in height and from 2' to 4' or 5' in width, depending on which cultivar you plant. They bloom in late spring and early summer, and most have flowers in various shade of white, pink or red. They are deciduous. I have them in a place where they get early morning direct sun, and then dappled shade at mid-day and full shade from mid-afternoon on. They are easy to grow. There are many, many cultivars available. Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria) Many cultivars of this evergreen shrub are available in many sizes. They will grow in almost any soil, and in everything from full sun to almost total shade. Mine get some afternoon shade. They bloom in early spring, and the berries are lovely. Some of the common ones you'll see in stores are "Stokes" which is a dwarf and "Pride of Houston" which is a tall, upright version. I don't know of any dwarf red oaks, but Shumard Oak is among the prettier oaks with red fall color. If you have heavy shade and good soil, there are a lot of red-leaved dwarf Japanese maples. You can plant dwarf crape myrtle anytime now, I would think. Hope this info helps. Dawn

I live in the UK and see Cordyline australis everywhere. Indivisa isn't so common though, I know there are some in very wet parts of the UK like some gardens in Northern Ireland and Devon. Occasionally we have a cold winter and there's a mass die off inland, but it's no big deal really. Most come back very strongly from the roots, especially if they were a large, mature plant before they died in the winter they reach their former size in a couple of years and come back very fast from a strong root system with fresh, new growth. What actually kills them is when you see well-meaning but misguided people wrapping them up in winter with bubble wrap and frost fleece. It's the worst thing to do in my opinion, these things hate to be soaking wet in winter and the frost protection people put round them just makes them rot. I don't protect my ones that are in the ground. If they die back they dieback, the soil doesn't freeze deep enough in Britain to kill them in most cases. Container ones i just put in a cold greenhouse to keep them from dying from the damp of winter which is the real cause of death. I have noticed a lot of variation in the plants grown here. Some are very narrow leaved, but mature plants are usually wide leaved, not sure if the leaves get wider over time or different varieties are tougher. I suspect the narrow leaved plants are the "Atlantic green" variety whereas the wider leaved ones are generic australis with maybe some indivisa introgression, although according to something i read somewhere the narrow leaved varieties are meant to be hardier. I've also never seen a mature, large plant of the red, pink or variegated varieties though i know some examples exist, they're probably less hardy and were perhaps selected from stock from the North island.

For the Musa - you can plant out a tiny pup and have it reach a 4-5 foot trunk + 4 foot leaves in one summer - lots of water and high nitrogen fertilizer! For the winter, you can dig up a stem (shallow root system) and pot it up in a big pot - minimum 18" diameter and height for the pot. One year I built an insulation box over the stems and put lights inside for heat - I was able to get the trunks to survive above ground over winter. They're pretty easy growers! Here is a pic from 2006 when I first started growing them. This started the summer as two 1 foot tall plants. They tend to pup like crazy when growing happily.