Beautiful. My MAC is also shade at her feet and sun at her head. She is happy as can be , just starting her 2nd year. Her blooms have the fragrance of lychee. We just love her. I too have experienced the huge change in roses from 1-2-3 yrs. They really come in to their own. Yours are really lovely. c

I cut my Purple Smoke Baptisia back to about 15 inches immediately after blooming this year. It has regrown to almost its original height and is perfect looking, with no flopping at all. Mine has always had a tendancy to splay open and flop somewhat after blooming, so I have been cutting it back some each year, but I never gave it such a drastic haircut until this year. Worked fine. Nice, bushy, upright & about the prettiest cleanest foliage of anything this time of year. Took surprisingly little time to regenerate itself, but as I said before, did not get quite as tall as it was originally. The problem that I had in previous years was that with a minor haircut it got even taller with regrowth than it was originally, somewhat out of proportion with other plantings in the bed, & still splayed open more than I liked. My baptisia is planted in amended rich fertile clay soil in an area that is somewhat high in my yard & on the dryish side (for my wettish garden). In less rich soil it might not need such drastic cutback treatment, but it was this or dig it out. BTW, it looked a lot like asparagus spears sticking out of the ground after I gave it the hard cutback, kind of ugly & scary looking, but I'm very happy with it now. Now it is sort of the perfect late summer/early fall plant that also managed to look good in spring & early summer - a very long season!

I'm in zone 5 (so quite a bit colder than you!) but my 5yr old own root Teasing Georgia this spring it is probably 7/8ft tall x 3ft wide. That is after I took off about 2ft of winter dieback. I expect it to be larger by the end of the summer. It is grown on an arbor and has done spectacular! I couldn't be happier with this rose. The flowers are fairly large, not huge but not small either. Once it starts blooming I can post a photo if you like. I got mine bareroot from DA.

That hot pink/vermillion colour is so odd. The one bloom I've smelt at a nursery reminded me of pears and so I had to have him. Benjamin is coming this year from DAR-USA and your photos and videos are so inspring. Thank you for sharing! Steven