Avoid Moon Valley - they will sell you lots of things that will not survive here. Their sales staff is rude and knows very little about planting. The reason the stock is depleted is that fall is our prime planting time for trees. Spring is coming, so make your plans and place your orders. Baker's in Central Phoenix is excellent. They will place orders for you from those wholesale growers. I'm not familiar with the nurseries in that part of the valley, but I've had good plants from Summer Winds.

The CR Garden Ctr. website looks good. I've added myself to their email list and will drop by for a look when I travel up to Culver's early next week. I seem to recall there's a good place for mulch (Ever-Green Bulk Mulch) in the same NW Cedar Rapids neck of the woods.

Hi Pete, Welcome to RMG! Did you get the mums at a florist shop kind of store, or at a "garden center" type store? I'm assuming you got regular "garden mums," but if you happened to get them in a floral department somewhere, they may not be hardy. The mums sold as floral decorations are grown for the quality of the flowers, and are often not hardy at all--though it's possible they could be. So, assuming you have regular garden mums, if you haven't already planted them in the ground, I'd do it as soon as possible if the ground isn't already frozen, and water them in really well after planting. As David says, it will be much more difficult to manage the watering over winter in a pot than it would be in the ground, and mums don't like their roots drying out at all---but if you keep them too wet, they'll rot. If you're able to get them in the ground and water them in well now, they'll very likely be fine for the rest of the winter, and you can just forget about them till spring. And I agree with David about mulching them with something, especially since they won't have any established root system---and you're also kind of on the edge of the cold limit for many mum varieties too. Mulch with something that will provide insulation, but will still allow for air circulation. If you happen to plant them in an area where they'll have snow cover for a lot of the winter, that will help provide extra insulation. I cut mums all the way down in the fall, but since yours aren't established, I think it might be best to only cut them down partway, like maybe half or a little bit more (depends on how tall they are), and leave the rest of the stems and foliage on over winter. That might help protect them a little bit. And just a heads up for you since this is your first post here (have you been lurking?) When you have a specific question like you do now, you'll usually find that more people will see your post and you'll get more replies if you start a separate thread. Sometimes people won't go back and read an "old" thread if they've already looked at it, and they might not realize that a new question has been added at the bottom. And if you want to, you can also choose to be "notified" when there's a reply if it's a thread you start. And---well---we LOVE new threads around here! ;-) We're glad you found us, and I hope we see more of you around here, Skybird

Lovely combination of fabrics and colors. Just a thought - are they stain-resistant, and are they washable? Babies are known for messes from both ends, and dry-cleanable fabrics could be an issue. The one other thought I have on the fabrics is that I would do the window seat cushion in the darker coral solid, with perhaps the polka dot for welting, which will create nice continuity with the insides of the cubbies and bulkhead. Then I would use the polka dot, stripe, and floral for the throw pillows, doing one side of each in the prints, and the other in a solid, for more interest. The flat plane of the window cushion wonÂt give you the same impact in the prints that the pillows will. I would do the crib skirt in the stripe, with box pleats inset with the solid fabric. As for the wall color, I would be inclined to go for a very pale shade of the coral or the green, rather than white.