I just wanted to post that I was out at the National Arboretum a few weeks ago. The large Q. acutas looked like they sustained some damage from teh past winter. Some twig and a few branches died back. Sad to see. But they will certainly survive. The Q. salicina looked like it had NO damage at all surprisingly. I have never seen acorns on them. Interestingly the Q. phillyreoides had some acorns. No apparent dieback. They all looked rather shrubby to me and not large single trunked trees. L. henyri and Q. myrsinifolias looked just fine. Q. glauca specimens at the Arboretum have all had a rough go of it over the years. Numerous diebacks. Pretty pathetic. They should really not be grown up here. But maybe they got some northern provenance stock that they wanted to try. I didn't see where they were from. Unrelated, but all the hollies looked great. Even Ilex latifolia. The Ilex latifolia in my yard looks great as well. No apparent winter damage. A small amount of leaf spot but overall I was very pleased. This post was edited by dave_in_nova on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 10:33

Thank for the input. Since adding a foot of soil would make the bed a bit high, I decided to tilt the soil slightly. I scraped off the very top bit of the soil along with weed, and then dump a mix of 50% compost / 50% top soil, about half a foot. I dug a hole and filled it with water and sprinkled some mycorrhiza before planting the plants, since disturbing the soil supposedly destroys mycorrhiza. I planted some beebalm and New England Aster. Both are pretty tough plants and should do well in full sun, though half the things I planted there hasn't done well. I am beginning to think that the place is cursed. Paul

Nice to hear, I have another one now I just recently bought in Va when I went on vacation there. The only other S.Mag I've seen in my area is a rich peoples area, it's where the Drs, Lawyers and Indian chiefs live, someone there has 2 fairly large S.Mags there, and when I went to the compost/leaf dump center, someone had dumped some cuttings from S.mag trees. They are very rare here, but, I would imagine that those in the rich neighborhood may have seen them and possibly a few people have planted them, unless those prunings were from those 2 trees I saw. They may have planted them small, because they weren't conicle like many nursery grown large transplants are shaped USUALLY. For all I know maybe a nursery near us is planting them, but, one of the largest around doesn't have them, I already nosed around there. Anyway, rmencel, it's great to have something so Tropicalesque, in our zones that needs no protection.

Joseph Hickman, a well-respected attorney (now deceased) formed his own club of hardy southern magnolia fanciers. His collection of magnolia grandiflora and american Holly still is in Benton, Illinois. In his opinion Brackens was the hardiest. I have done numerous google searches and found many are growing it west of Chicago. Many years ago Dr. Dirr did an article on testing the limits of southern magnolia in the Horticulture magazine in March of 1992. He did a very scientific study and rated some of the hardiest magnolia grandliflora known. In my modest collection I have Edith Bogue, Twenty Four Below, Victoria, Poconos and I had a nursery in Tennessee to root some cuttings from the most exposed of locations that fared the best in winter of the late 70`s here. If everyone was contented with the plants as they were originally where would we be today. People like Mrs. Meservae I`m told wasn`t contented with what she hollies she could grow. With very limited knowledge of genetics, she still made quite a contribution to plant lovers everywhere with the blue hollies rugose/Chinese hollies and rugose and English Holly. I don`t think one should stake their livelihood on growing plants of marginal hardiness, but pushing the limits benefits us all. By the way there are also evergreen forms of magnolia virginiana. I`m experimenting with Henry Hicks Pat McCracken has it as one of his goals to find or create selections of magnolia grandiflora for Zone 4.