Nice list, thanks! I have a dog, so the indoor plants I have are nontoxic: an african violet, a nontoxic fern, culinary herbs in hubby's Aerogarden, and a goldfish plant (which I love!! It is so cool looking.) Used to have a Persian violet which was fabulous and fragrant-- smelled great for about 2 months, but it eventually finished flowering, sickened and died. It was replaced by the goldfish plant.

Buff, 'Adam' has very, very few thorns. Many of its canes have no thorns at all, but a few canes have a very light sprinkling of them. Would it fan out on a trellis? Yes, and then in a couple of years it would eat the trellis. I wouldn't even try it on a trellis long term. In my garden it was much too vigorous for that and it has a mind of its own as to where its long, arching canes want to go. It's basically a giant arching shrub. Giant. It's blooms never balled in this climate. Basye's Blueberry and Nur Mahal have very different plant habits. BB is fairly erect and its canes are not flexible at all. It naturally is an open plant. It reacts well to pruning however, and by pruning it can easily become a more full shrub than it normally would be. It's a beauty, I love it, and is 100% thornless and fragrant. So sad that mine had rose mosaic virus. A neighber two blocks from me has a BB and his has the virus too. I'll eventually order a new one and it will come from The Antique Rose Emporium, where I think I will have a better chance of having a virus-free plant. 'Nur Mahal' is an arching plant with fairly flexible canes. Mine is about 5 ft tall and about 7 feet wide. But it doesn't look bulky at all because it is very open in habit. I think it's a graceful looking plant. As much as I like BB, I like Nur Mahal even more. Both are totally thorn-free (at least mine are). Hamp, I give my purple coneflowers lots of water and they seen to really like it. I guess I'm not surprised that they would wilt in our furnace of a summer. Their blooms last a long time on the plant and in a vase, which is a nice trait. Hamp, I promise you, Red Yucca will not wilt on you :-) It's extremely drought and heat tolerant. All that it asks is well-draining soil. It is not a true yucca and therefore has no thorns or sharp points. It is said to be very cold-tolerant ... it can handles anything you would get during a Mississippi winter and then some. Randy

The regular blue grama forms a 6" tall to 12" wide tight tuft. The stems are very thin and stiff with those little eyelashes on top, a see through deal. They go dormant if it gets dry in summer but then green up if it rains. I sort of like the wheat color myself though as a color and mine are usually a mix of wheat and green in summer. Its short enough to be used as a lawn with no mowing unless you want to cut off the seeds for a lawn look. 'Blonde Ambition' is one I haven't tried but wantanamara said it blooms heavily all summer for her, she's got harsher, more challenging soil conditions than me. I especially like blue grama here and there on the borders but honestly, I don't have a problem with grasses spilling over onto the edge of the sidewalk and I think yours look good in spite of being a bit soggy in that photo. Lucky people are getting rain, we are still in the 80's and bone dry here. wah. I have lots of plants that spill over and onto the sidewalk somewhat and I like the ones that come up in the cracks too. Each year I intentionally put seeds in the cracks, it makes a natural more wild prairie look which is what I am wanting. I did have to take out 2 sideoats grama on the slope that goes downhill toward the sidewalk. It stands straight up but as the plant increases in diameter by year 3 they tend to lean downhill on the side toward the sidewalk, its so tall its a bit much and I didn't like the way it looked. I replaced them with 'Blue Heaven' bluestem and massed a couple areas elsewhere. They don't do this when growing on the flat ground, there they stand straight up. I love those. They are the fastest to reach mature size of all the native grasses I've planted. Thats a blue grama in the corner and a smaller volunteer close by. I don't get lots of volunteers, just a few. This is good because its not a long lived grass and it replaces itself nicely.

Mexican Feather Grass is hardy down to zone 4 according to Plants of the SW catalog. The only problem I have ever had with it up here in OKC is it flops in too much shade and rots with too much water. You can use it in areas that get full sun in spring fall and winter because it goes dormant in summer. The plants get very ratty after a few years but there's always replacements coming up. Once it goes to seed, you seem to have it for keeps. I don't ever trim them, they look awful for quite a while if you do. Its best to just let a new plant take over once its got a lot of dead leaves and there's always plenty of them. They don't always transplant well. The best ones are the ones that volunteer from seed. One year I let volunteers take over large area way out back. They looked good until we got a lot of rain for days on end + the sun moved putting them in shade, then they looked like dirty dogs because the tips got so dirty and sodden so I yanked they all. Anyway, it was quite a sight that spring. Pulling this up makes me want to plant another drift of them. I took these on a windy spring day, it was mesmerizing to watch it blow