aimeekitty, your two biggest issues are going to be the drainage, which is a given. You're in a newer area where, by law, they must compact the soil up to a 98% compaction so seismic waves pass through it quickly, producing less shaking. It's a trade-off. Good drainage and shaking, or bad with less movement. The other is going to be hard frosts. Being at the foot of that slope, and where you are in general, cold air is going to flow into your back yard and pool around the house. Any outlet you can provide for it to flow through the yard and not get trapped there will increase your chances with most plants. Those we've mentioned and not alerted you to cold issues should be fine. Duranta can have thorns so make sure any you buy are thornless. They CAN freeze badly there, so put them where there is good air drainage and reflected heat from hardscape. I use it on a south facing wall in Stevenson Ranch where it is happier than the Hybrid Perpetual the lady who installed the garden used. Solid green foliage is much more durable up there than the variegated types. Spring Bouquet has the more durable foliage of the Viburnum there and it is evergreen. I grow a Pink Snowball which is deciduous and the foliage shows burn half way through summer partly due to heat, aridity, alkalinity and its deciduous nature. If your Mom's spirea is doing OK, consider rooting more if you want more, from her plant instead of buying them. That way, should one not make it, there is still a starter plant to go to for more. Repeat flowering iris and daylilies aren't as vigorous as once flowering, so they don't take over and naturalize like the once flowering. In smaller gardens where everything has to carry its weight and provide some sort of interest, they are a much more reliable and pleasing choice for most people. Like the OGRs, if you had an acre where they can be hidden when "off", they're wonderful, but when they are in your face as soon as you walk out the door, they'd better look great and provide interest all the time or you will soon resent them. I forgot I wanted to also suggest Germander for your garden. Beautiful color in both foliage and flower and being fuzzy, the rabbits won't like it. Teucrium chamaedrys makes a lovely edging or filler plant. Teucrium fruticans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teucrium_fruticans is the silvery, fuzzy one which flowers later in summer with blue violet flowers. Both have grown quite well there and regain their early beauty by being whacked to the ground should they out grow their welcome. If lavenders aren't happy in your back yard, I agree, it's very likely the drainage. You might try digging enormous holes, much larger than needed, use something better composted than green to amend, then plant the crown of the plant higher as is suggested for Camellia and Azalea so when the water level is higher, the crown is up out of the muck. Yes, they will eventually settle down lower, but it has seemed to allow them to mature into more durable plants by the time they settle. You should also look at Santolina, either the green or silver, or both. They should be whacked back severely to renew themselves each spring. NOTHING eats them. They are highly scented. If you can determine where the rabbits enter your yard and concentrate the highly scented plants in that area, you'll "jam their radar", creating a zone they won't enter as the plants keep them from being able to smell predators. It is actually very effective. Anything you can stand that is highly scented (foliage, rather than flower) works well for this. While I can understand the comment about wishing more green shrubs were planted earlier in the garden, please keep in mind with your drainage, plants aren't going to grow as quickly, perhaps eventually not as large, because instead of growing down into the soil, roots have to grow closer to the surface, usually just under the sod, but they will eventually get larger. I know how frustrating it can be to keep seeing bare spaces between the plants, but if you're planning on living with that garden for a number of years, putting less permanent things in where the existing plants are expect to grow into, will make for many fewer headaches later on. Everything mentioned so far not only can be pruned, with few exceptions, they SHOULD be pruned to maintain them and make them grow more densely. If you drive along Soledad Canyon and notice the Leucophyllum along the bike path from Rainbow Glenn east, you'll see how rangy they are from no pruning. Contrast that with how wonderful they look in nursery cans at Green Thumb. Not only water, but PRUNING. All of the shrubs can get rangy unless kept sheared to maintain their density and that dense canopy creates many more flowering shoots, concentrating the blooms and fruit more densely for prettier effects in smaller spaces. Diosma can be pruned, it's just that it has such a nicely pleasing shape and habit, they're prettier if unpruned. The truth is they will probably require some pruning over time. I prefer simply cutting them half or more straight across the top. They grow upright with a fairly flattened surface, punctuated with flowering shoots. If you just cut it all off straight, it will respond by shooting up new flowering shoots and filling in, only shorter. That's what they do with the nursery plants before putting them out in flower. Why can't you? They just aren't that pretty if kept sheared as the mow/blow/go manicurists do to everything green. You'll see many Pittosporum Wheeler's Dwarf and Nandina domestica nana all over and they work well, remaining smaller and more ground cover. The Nandina also adds beautiful spots of red in cool weather. The City has them planted everywhere because they live forever, add color and require virtually nothing. Taller types can get fairly rangy pretty quickly and benefit from being whacked low. I'm not personally attracted to the Pittosporum and usually warn to keep all of them away from the house as they contain an oil which burns rather hot if the house burns. You don't need fuel as there is plenty already. The Nandina nana can be quite beautiful. I use it along a sidewalk in a very narrow strip with Santolina and lavenders in Old Orchard. It gets hacked when it grows on the walk and in spring, otherwise, they just do their thing and look pretty. Lantana can be a very effective ground cover there except when hard freezes hit. It loves the heat, is quite drought tolerant, stinks so the vermin usually avoid it and will flower any time it's hot. The low growing white and lavender are very effective and benefit from being cut low when needed. Santa Barbara Daisy is another "weed" which will grow with wild abandon there and can cover a lot of open ground. It will reseed itself and can easily be pulled and needs scraping off at the ground annually. It will fill a LOT of holes! You may want to check the free ads there for a source of horse manure. Don't worry about weeds as there are PLENTY of seeds there already; they blow in on the wind; come in on your gardener's tools and feet; on the rabbits that visit and even on your shoes when you walk around. The bacterial action of the digesting manure releases Humic Acid which helps to condition the soil, and the earthworms which will crawl across flaming asphalt to get to it will churn things up greatly. Keep it around the drip zone of the plants and between them, not against the trunks and crowns and keep it damp. In this heat, you can digest an inch of the stuff with regular moisture, to a thin layer of earthworm castings in about three months. I did it for years in Scenic Hills. You might also consider picking up Grow Power Plus and Grow More Organic All Purpose at Green Thumb, mix the two together so it's 15# of Grow More and 20# of Grow Power Plus, broadcast it everywhere by hand, then rinse it all off the foliage on top of the mulch. Not enough nitrogen to hurt anything, yet enough to feed the soil bacteria and get things cooking. It helped break up the red clay in Northbridge in a season, permitting things to grow which hadn't gotten bigger in years. All of it will help with your drainage over time and keep things growing healthily until then. If you have dogs, they will LOVE eating the organics. There is no difference to them between blood and bone meal and dog food. Neither product has insecticides or fungicides in them. I've used them in my gardens there for years. In all my years of gardening there, the only white fly problems have been in sheltered situations which promoted their growth. Bacopa in a nook where they dryer vents, sheltered by the garage in Old Orchard and in a walled back garden in Northbridge where no direct sun or wind hit it on Begonia were the only spots. Generally, if it is windy, hot, exposed, you aren't going to have many insects other than possibly spider mite because of the aridity. Scale can also be a problem there and it is a witch to get rid of. Florida Scale can attack Pandorea there. Systemic rose and flower food has seemed to work on it. Don't worry about the white flies on hibiscus, you won't have them due to the climate, and the hibiscus will likely freeze out before it's an issue anyway. Lavatera don't seem bothered by them there, nor here and they do provide enough color and fill. I grow Kew Rose out front in the upper terrace behind Mary Rose and they are similar in color. As is their habit, it gets quite rangy and requires hacking back to the nubs each year. It went from a one gallon to over seven feet in each direction in one year. The drainage is very good and it's protected from the wind by a six foot wall. Dwarf myrtle is the one you want. You can keep it six inches tall seemingly forever or allow it to get huge like the six foot tall one out back here which is the lone survivor of the sixty year old hedge of it. The stuff roots very easily so you can make more if you want and it will self seed easily in mulch. It germinates at a client's house up there from plants in the neighbor's yard. It is EXTREMELY difficult to give you accurate ideas of what to expect these things to mature to due to drainage alone. What grows feet each week in Old Orchard with the sandy soil and excellent drainage, grows inches in the same time in her daughter's garden in Stevenson Ranch. The climate is a bit more severe there and the soil is highly compacted making things struggle more. If you get some mulch down, preferably horse manure, use the fertilizer combination suggested above and keep it all moist, things will begin responding much more quickly and mature to larger sizes than they would otherwise. You'll also make the soil conditions more favorable for the things you've had difficulties with already, permitting you to expand what you plant where, with time. The Chinese Snowball can grow there with afternoon sun protection to prevent foliage burn, but it may not be happy. The best two I've seen in gardens here in Southern California were the one in The Homestead Acre in Chatsworth Park South planted on the north side of large trees so it received dappled sun, and the one Laurie Chaffin grew at Pixie Treasures in Yorba Linda, which also had protection from the hottest sun. Both enjoyed excellent drainage. I've actually had very good luck with Hydrangea quercifolia Pee Wee in Old Orchard where it gets shielded from the brunt of the hot sun by the block wall and the drainage is excellent. http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/plant.asp?code=Z460 It flowers nearly all year and gets a bit of autumn color, though never goes fully deciduous. The warning about Hebe and drainage is right on. They hate soggy soil. Kim

It looks like a tobacco budworm to me. These caterpillars come in many colors, and, according to David Wagner, they 'end up matching the color of their foodplant' so I'm guessing this one has been eating another flower before it traveled to the pink hibiscus. Or maybe it was eating deep inside the bud where it was pale green. These caterpillars are closely related to the familiar corn earworm. Cotton is second in the list of common food plants, and cotton and hibiscus are in the same family of plants, so it figures. I've never raised any gray hairstreaks, so I had to look them up, too, in my Wagner book. He didn't say whether they ONLY eat flowers, but he says that's where to look for them, and the picture in the book is of a cat on a flower. The mallow family is listed second as a favorite food plant, and hibiscus and cotton are in that family. I assume they eat flowers exclusively, but I'd offer it some leaves, just in case. Nice finds! Sherry

Thanks, Kim, for starting a new thread! I promise to not blind people on the new one! LOL I included a link below to the new thread. I sure hope you're doing better, Kim... You're still very much in my thoughts and prayers. Dorothy, I'll shoot you an email on the fonts later after I finish the file for the WOW swap. In short, for bigger font, use everything between the quotes, but replace the two quote symbols with a ""font size=4>Type whatever you want in here between the HTML codes."/font> If this isn't clear, I'll send more later by email.... I hope I don't forget... If I do, just email me! LOL Blessings, Angela

Well I'm NOT a blue person. Indoors I have NO blue. My husband doesn't understand this. I have no idea why I feel this way. Outdoors things are different! I have a blue/yellow/white garden bed which I love. Yes, delphineums, catananche, campanulas, baptisia and more, are mixed with trollius, coreopsis moonbeam, peony Claire de Lune and low growing white clematis and aquilegia. It is a big mix and wouldn't be any fun at all without the blue! There are loads of clematis that are purple or blue/purple, but also some very nice blues I think. You do get into the question of "what is blue?" My husband and I think this could well be a male/female issue! Also, by saying a flower is blue, perhaps a catalogue gains more sales? * Posted by: coolbeans (My Page) on Sat, Feb 2, 02 at 13:12 This is my VERY favorite thread, and I totally agree with all those who feel that there is just "something" about blue flowers; they ARE magical, they ARE very special; and they make me happier than any other color flower. Don't know why...I just started a flat full of Bluebird delphinium seeds I saved from my one lonely plant last year. A bunch of them germinated, so now I can't wait to have a huge stand of them! Maybe they won't bloom this year, but maybe they will. And also "true blue" penstemons, I'm trying for the first time. I can't get enough of this precious color. * Posted by: Anne_Marie_Alb (My Page) on Tue, Feb 5, 02 at 17:47 WOW....... Did anyone realize that this thread started almost 5 years ago... on Feb. 15, 1997!!!!! I am amazed it has survived that long. Probably, the oldest thread still on the top page! I wonder if "Clare B" (who started the thread) is still an active member of the Garden Web!!! I personally love blue flowers (I mean blue, and not purple, which I also like). I can't believe how many blue flowers I am starting from seeds this year... and that was just a pure coincidence! I also love RED flowers.. Maybe, I should start a "red flower" thread! I will first check the archives! * Posted by: Clare (My Page) on Thu, Feb 7, 02 at 20:34 Yes, Ann_Marie, I am still here! I will be a bit sad to see this thread fade away when it hits the 100 posts mark. After that, the threads are closed. I don't think I have any true blue flowers still. "Victoria Blue" Salvia is the closest thing. I use it a lot. It is such a heavy, long bloomer, and about one in twenty of them will survive winter here. Just wish I could predict which would survive so that I could save seed from those alone and perhaps work up a more hardy strain. By the way, the Hydrangeas in Memphis, Tennessee are incredible. Some are so saturated blue that I'd have to call them navy. * Posted by: Dswan (My Page) on Sat, Feb 9, 02 at 22:37 I'm going to add to this extremely long thread only because there really is something to true blue. I grow from seed a very difficult plant to propagate called Penstemon cyananthus or Wasatch Penstemon. I cold stratify and plant these every year in hopes of gettting one or two in my garden every year. Absolutely gorgeous. * Posted by: Rosa (My Page) on Mon, Mar 11, 02 at 10:24 Did no one mention Gentians-now those are blue! (along with my favorite penstemson of course-some are indeed blue). * Posted by: pineshade7b ) on Mon, Apr 15, 02 at 11:02 i agree with gloria mc coy. i love blue and green , they are my favorite colors in anything. just look in my house and closets. blue..ocean, blue jeans, my own eyes are blue and my husband's are green. many reasons to answer -why blue. although i do not "hyperventilate" , if i should go into a nursery and ask for a blue -flowering plant and the staff looks down their nose at me, i'll know now that they are only doing it because they think I'M a snob. until i adopted gardening as a serious hobby i had no idea that blue was a "snob" color. i just naturally began to look into flowers in the colors i liked personally. you learn something new everyday. i would have been hurt and confused to walk into a nursery and be looked at like a pariah, what did i say? now i know, thanks clare. * Posted by: DesertGardner (My Page) on Fri, Apr 19, 02 at 12:38 Wow - I never knew there was such a controversy over the color blue in the garden. After reading all the posts, I now understand why some gardeners prefer the color. And I have to say that I've never met any gardeners whom I would consider snobbish. Most of them are really quite down to earth! (if you pardon the expression...) I recently tried planting a red, white and blue flower bed, with 'Victoria Blue' Salvia being my blue color. It's a little too purple and doesn't look right as a "patriotic" design. I will probably tear out the red and white and keep the "blue" (purple) since it seems to like this desert heat. Someone mentioned black flowers, and I remembered seeing black pansies in the most recent Burpee catalog. They're a beautiful velvety black with a spot of yellow in the center. I think I'll plant some this winter, and start an obsession with black flowers! (just kidding Clare...) -Kara [* Posted by: yeona_sky (My Page) on Mon, Jun 24, 02 at 0:37 I just bought a blue poppy and am nervously watching its progress. My success with blues has been an up hill battle, but that hasn't changed my desire to spotlight it in my garden. Why blue?, again it's a passion with me. Clare, I hope you get the last word on this thread, and I hope you understand Why blue, a little better. * Posted by: Duster (My Page) on Wed, Jun 26, 02 at 23:56 I agree with the many others about getting annoyed when purple is referred to as blue. Maybe that's why I take up the cause of truly blue flowers! 99% of my Delphiniums are the true electric blue ones. I'd love one of the Himalayan Poppies but just not right for my little yard. I like the blue flowers, rather than the blue foliage plants. And no, blue is NOT my favorite color - I have nothing blue in my home decor. I just like the uniqueness of the TRUE blue and my stubbornness to get people to stop calling it purple!!!!