Granite....beautiful picture, BTW. How inspired to use fresh herbs in your bouquet, corsages and headdress. There is a lot of folklore that goes along with rosemary, and it was an herb traditionally given on the wedding day for remembrance. Not to be morbid, but also rosemary was buried with the dead so as not to be forgotten by the the living. As far as I know, talking with my neighbor who has the beautiful rosemary bush in-ground, he did nothing special to his plant. When I asked him about the snow (not a lot) we had that past winter, he said he just went out and brushed the snow off the plant. Like it was no big deal. Judging from the look of his plant and it's sturdy wooden, bushy stalks, he's growing the "BBQ" variety. Right now, still, all my rosemary is in containers and doing very well and do have excellent drainage. They are the least watered of all my herbs, and seem to like it that way. I have Miss Jessup, Gorizia, Arp, the "BBQ" type (my oldest) and one I'm not sure of. It's the one you find in grocery stores around the beginning of the growing season....has the shape of a Christmas tree. That type of rosemary turned out to be the most difficult one for me and I will never buy another one of them. They look so beautiful in the store...healthy, tall, lush and green. But they're so root bound. After getting it home and removing it from it's little 8" pot that I knew it wouldn't survive in, I really had to work at the root system to free up the roots. Hard as a rock. I replanted it, and it did well for a short time, but soon started giving me problems. Part of it dying out, other parts yellowing. It always looked like a sick rosemary plant. I thought it never stood a chance. But right now, after last year, it's finally taken hold and it growing beautifully, with new and long healthy resinous shoots everywhere. I couldn't be happier that it ended up surviving. I actually had to, at one point, snip it off at the top, as it was "dead" at it's tip. So needless to say, it no longer has the Christmas tree shape. I have to say, I never expected it to survive but refused to chuck it and just adopted a "wait and see" attitude. I'm glad I did. It's been mentioned here on the GW, and I believe it to be true, that rosemary does thrive on a certain amount of neglect. It just needs to do it's thing. It needs lots of sunlight, and good drainage. The soil NEVER needs to dry out, but (for me, container-wise), when it gets to feeling like it's getting close to being "dry", I will give it water enough to just slightly drip out the bottom, and that's it. And then I leave it alone. And depending on the heat and the rain, it may be a week before I get back to giving it more water. Seems to be the way for my rosemary, as they're all doing wonderfully. And, I do harvest from all of them all the time. I do agree that not all Zone 7's are created equal. Here, snow may or may not come in winter. The ground may never even freeze. It's rare it does, but it does happen. And yes, all rosemary's aren't created equal either. Some are hardier than others. I think they types I have chosen are the best for my zone. But again, the Christmas tree type....never again. They look beautiful in the store, but are the touchiest and hardest to keep alive, IMHO. I would really love to plant all of them outside in-ground, but I have to admit, I love having them indoors during the winter and they seem to love the spot I have chosen for them. And even given the fact that they're all in the biggest pots imaginable, I know they'll never reach their full potential in containers. But that's OK. They provide me with a bounty of rosemary to cook with and even enough (along with my cilantro, thymes, mints and basils) to sell at the Farmer's Market if I wanted. LOL. But I'm happiest when I give them away to neighbors.

I grew two Rosemary plants outdoors here in Canon City (zone 6a) for quite a few years. It was an extra-hardy variety named 'Arp' (after a place in Texas where it was found). Even with this variety, and being planted near the house, there was some winter dieback, especially on the part of the plant facing out from the house. But with a trim in the Spring and some warm weather, they were quite handsome again all year until one of those bitter cold spells would come again the next winter. I also would get a few light blue flowers on them in April, but these tended to grow on the undamaged parts down low or closer to the house, so they weren't that noticeable. But both of them did grow quite large; in fact the one on the west side of the house grew to about 4' by 4', much bigger than I had anticipated and had room for. A local garden center guy said he wanted to come and transplant it, so I hacked it back to a bunch of bigger stems about a foot high and wide. The guy never came for it and it grew back beautifully that year, but two years later I had the same 'too big' problem again, so I just pulled it out. I had decided to keep only the second one on the south side of the house, where there was more room. But this one was always more prone to winter dieback than the one that was on the west side, and with a sudden -11 night last winter I was left last spring with a very unattractive plant, with live stems mostly near the ground and near the wall, so I decided to pull it out too. Last summer I was without a Rosemary for the first time in many years. I'll plant another one someday when I think I have just the right spot on the west side of my house. So if you want to try growing Rosemary outdoors, it should probably be just one plant that you're willing to pamper a little bit. And don't buy the Christmas tree ones. Buy one that is known to be extra-hardy like 'Arp', or the one marie23 mentions above. (I will mention that 'Arp' was NOT slow growing, unlike her experience with 'Athens Blue Spire'.) Plant it in a sunny, protected spot near the house and deeply mulch the ground around it with bark or some other insulating material. And in zone 5, to keep it healthy and attractive, I would be prepared to throw a blanket or something over it whenever the lows are single digit or lower. With an annual trim and an occasional deep watering, you should have a reasonably good chance of success. Somebody mentioned Albuquerque. Canon City has about the same average winter temps as Albuquerque, but we are more prone to the occasional cold spell with lower lows. I love to go to Osuna Nursery down there in the Spring and look for marginally hardy plants to try and grow here. As soon as the holidays are over, I think I'll start planning another trip...

In my experience, Rosemary bushes die in the winter here in Rhode Island. I have a bush in its second year in a 10 gallon pot next to a small window inside an unheated garage where it's doing well despite an unusually harsh winter. Because of the low temp it is barely growing. Thus it has kept its vigorous shape. Compare to bringing rosemary inside the house where the heat doesn't match the lack of sun -- and begins to look wimpy. My last outside overwintering rosemaries held out until the last month so my fingers are crossed (albeit with a confident carelessness). I hope my rosemary champion can make it through the last weeks because there's nothing quite like a well kept big, bushy Mediterranean rosemary bush during the height of summer. If this works I may try it again next year outside in the ground with its own cover, as it appears the freezing temps can be handled without humidity-leeching winds and battering precipitation.

You might want to read (or listen) to the news piece NPR did on this subject, dated April 22 2015. Found in the Salt, titled http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2015/04/22/401536105/buzz-over-bee-health-new-pesticide-studies-rev-up-controversy I purchased several flats of thyme from HD a few days ago and found the same plastic marker shown above stating the plants were treated with neonics. These ground covering plants were to replace the lawn, as we are looking for water-saving alternatives to grass. What I find particularly disturbing is that in the NPR story, the study mentions that crop seeds are treated (coated) with this chemical. After the seed germinates (typically corn or soybeans), the plant grows, incorporating this nicotine compound into its cells. There is still enough active compound remaining in the plant after it has grown to a mature size, bearing flowers, to be an effective insecticide. The nicotine is found in the pollen and nectar of these flowers, and is consumed by bees. What?! That is a very powerful compound if what is coated on an individual seed is enough to deliver a dose to leaves and flowers after several months of growth. I mistakenly thought that most pesticides had to be sprayed on the plant repeatedly over the growing season. The benefit of a genetic alteration, like having a plant make a Bt protein, is that nothing is sprayed or added to the soil. But in this case, a seed treated with a coating is able to permeate every cell of the plant as it grows. I understand there are many chemicals used in agriculture that are labelled "systemics", but I envisioned that such a product required it to be liberally spread in the soil or sprayed on the leaves, where the plant takes it in and distributes throughout it's tissues. Somehow the idea that something coated on a seed could last this long is just not something I had considered. I certainly would never chose to use these chemicals in my garden. I hate to think this ground cover will harbor this compound for many months. I will have to research this some more before I decide what to do.