I have a couple weigelas but I don't think they are good for a front landscape. I live in Mississippi and they do not leaf out early, and are bare all winter. The flowering period is fairly short. I think you should find something else. I would not be familiar with what works in your northern zone. But there is a plant called lorapetalum, has a purplish foliage year round here, and there is a greenish one too. Flowers in spring. For my front I prefer evergreens or at least several of them with some deciduous because I don't like naked shrubs for a long period. Perhaps you can visit a nursery and see what options are out there yourself.

If you like Corals too take a look on the Daylily forum for my thread about "Favorite Corals,planning a new bed as therapy"those that answered it posted pictures, there are some real stunning blooms. I will be using Daylilys in the bed with the Coral Pink roses. So far I am sure to order America CL and Lady of the Mist roses from Roses Unlimited. Thank you for the ideas.

Mary, I am such a dope, lol. I remembered when you posted your pics it was in my thread asking about CP's bloom size. I found the pix, thank you again! Yes they are exactly the same. Speaking of bloom size, I went out and measured the new blooms, just like I did the first 2 that opened. The one with 6 points/tendrils is 8" wide not counting the tendrils at 1 1/4" each. The 2nd 5 pointed bloom is 6" across (not counting the tendils of the same size), and both blooms are 10" long, not counting the calyx. I was just measuring for record keeping purposes, but I think now I will try to find out, if possible, the sizes of both the real CP blooms, and the Coral Glow blooms, and compare. And yes, you are right, the seller was tctopcat. I think I will email him tomorrow and let him know.. what do you all think? I really don't think this is Coral Pink as he said. Here are some newer pix..of this..Coral Something, lol Notice the one on the left has 6 points, and the right one has 5. Normal for a brug to do that? Of course I still love it..I just wish I had the proper name with it.

The foundation is primarily a ruddy smectite clay. While digging, there seems to be a large quantity of mica and a lesser quantity of rather small (quail-egg sized) pieces of quartz although brick sized pieces of quartz pop up from time to time. I originally tried using sand and a quantity of gypsum as an amendment with composted leaf mould, sphagnum peat, sawdust and manure as organics. Notwithstanding that I think it's the muckiest substance I've ever seen, the clay does seem to percolate a bit and Japanese irises nearby were severely injured. And a small mystery--moss has no difficulty growing on the surface even though I'd thought that iron sulphate (which I'd assumed was acidic) is used to kill moss. Performance is a mixed bag w/regard to plants situated in the native "soil". Certain peony varieties, notably the corals :), have in fact done better than some lactifloras I brought in from China. I routinely shuttle failing peonies in the autumn up to my parents' property which has actual soil. The tree peonies are a total crapshoot--certain Chinese varieties have entirely collapsed whereas other ones have produced gigantic blooms. The Japanese varieties do modestly well but increase of all the TPs has been consistently slow. Regarding other plants, I stopped vegetable gardening after the first year--not worth the effort; even quinoa failed to produce anything substantial. Lilacs have had a harder time acclimatizing to the clay than the peonies--they don't die, but they grow sparingly and many of them decrease--I did do a lot of amendment in particular for them and I got the soil in their holes up to 6.5 pH; of course, the holes are surrounded by a sea of acidic clay. I learned from a neighbour that the area in which I put the lilacs had been used to grow tobacco which is hard on the soil. With plenty of amendments, daylilies have done very well, although there is substantial variance in performance around the property. In digging up failing daylilies to ascertain what's going on below the surface, I found oftentimes that the daylily roots had only a tenuous hold on the clay and that most of their roots were situated in the mulch I'd put down. Consequently, I replace up to 70/80% of the clay in areas with daylilies. Such a large removal isn't feasible for the peonies, in large part because the quantity of mica is great enough to prevent digging much deeper than a foot with a spade and oftentimes the mica is encountered a mere few inches below the surface. Camellias have been removed entirely from the lot, since a season or two in situ and the poor things are nearly on their death beds. Similarly, rhododendrons fail, but kurume azaleas and flowering quince do well. Japanese maples do not thrive, but dogwood, Prunus mume, pin oaks and silver maple grow alright. That's about all I can summarize about the soil and performance in it. Oh--one anecdote: the water is acidic enough that distinct copper sulphate routinely accumulates on my shower walls, though there is very little other mineral deposit to be found (I assume the copper is being leached from my pipes).