Ego45 - that is absolutely stupendous. I love A. parviflora. How old is it and how much water/sun? Of course keeping one like that going is a different story than getting them started. There is one that size at Holden Arboretum and I am just totally in love with it. I make a point of visiting it in the summertime when in bloom - prob my favorite single plant in the whole arboretum. I've inquired at several nurseries around here and told I can get a 1 or 2 gallon plant for about $50 and they say its slow growing. I have a very large area that I wanted to surround with it and hide the area from the road, and have a long curved bench in the middle. I was thinking of starting burning bush as a fast grower to allow the Aesculus to fill in. Can always rip out the Euonymous later. Westy - That goatsbeard lasts maybe a month. Then the plumes do turn brown. The plant is very pretty though - nice leaves. If I get a lot of rain during blooming it will cause the plumes to lean but I don't bother tying it up. A benefit for me is it appears to be deer resistant - they don't touch it at all. I love color, its just this path is devoted to hosta, ferns, azaleas, columbine, leucoethoe, rhodos, etc. It seems that a lot of shade plants have white flowers. A big exception are the lobelias and they are just terrific

Wow this thread has been ages hahaha but anyway i just wanted to share cause i also want answers. Hopefully someone has a good theory about it. I have a closed terrarium/vivarium that i tried or shall i say experimented. It looks interesting cause I tried building it on a 3 liter glass container. I learned a little about creating it but i would say i dont have any background of biology or other sciences. So i piled the largest pebbles that could fit to the container's mouth that has a hole of an inch. The height of the pebbles from the very bottom is around an inch. Next to the pile is white sand that i dried up from a beach for half an inch, next to that are colorful beeds-mixed red and yellow to make it colorful if u look at it from the outside. Thats half an inch as well. Next is clay soil for half an inch, then pounded charcoal for half an inch. I heard that charcoal could clean the air or stabilize the atmosphere inside this but im not very sure of it. Hahaha Lastly, is a pile of loam soil which is ideal for the plants to grow. I planted moss which i got from the bark of a mango tree, a few fern, and few grass that only grow around 1/2 inch. Poured 5 tbsp of rainwater. Apparently its close and it can get enough sunlight to suntain its life. Its 11 months now and never been opened. It looks healthy cause the water does its cycle inside the bottle like the rain. And u know what? The interesting part is, i saw really tiny insect and a spider that came to life. BDW i didnt put anything in it. Do u think that was just normal or was it just part of the life cycle inside the bottle? Hahaha

I am reading this older thread to collect opinions about Sweet N Neat. But I want to throw in a plug for Tiny Tim, which I have grown for over 40 years when I want a dwarf. This may be primarily a characteristic of a determinant, but you have complete control over the size of Timmy. Whenever his roots start to get root-bound, he produces tomatoes, regardless of size of the plant. I love to grow him in a coffee cup. I think he is so cute at 6 inches tall loaded with tomatoes. If in a 2-4 gallon pot, he gets to be a bushy 2 ft tall before producing tomatoes. He requires less light. In fact, he will die in full sun in the garden. He is the perfect indoor tomato because of the low light requirements. Granted Timmy is no Sun Gold in taste, but I consider him acceptable tasting. If you grow him 2 feet tall in an apt, you have a pretty abundant supply of tomatoes to add color to salads. I threw out Tumbling Tom because of bad taste, and Red Robin had nothing over Timmy. But I wonder how Sweet N Neat compares with Tiny Tim.

I like to get my seeds from vendors that grew their plants in areas similar to mine, if possible (however, most places are pretty different). The reason I like to do this is acclimatization. If a plant gets used to growing in a greenhouse, or a vastly different region, it might take a few years of growing in your climate to get it acclimatized sufficiently. I think acclimatization to your own personal soil and water is as important as acclimatization to the climate, however. Seeds from my friend a couple miles away just don't grow the same in my soil. Even my neighbor's yard is different with seeds from the same seed packet. When I say they don't grow the same, I mean the production and taste is different. The plants can still seem healthy.