Tinkerbelle has done well for me for many years in my very sandy, well draining soil. Yellow foliaged shrubs like Deutzia 'Chardonnay Pearls' are gorgeous. Can't imagine why people wouldn't like Heptacodium; a great plant for late summer bloom, and great bark in winter. Leptodermis you can keep.

Oh, how I wish that I could have taken all your seven son's off your hands. I agree about the apt named "Endless Bummer."

Even here in cool western WA the flowerheads on Endless Bummer* go brown early. I was looking at some stock yesterday that included plant with a flowerhead that was browning, while still in the process of opening up and becoming colored. We had a sunny afternoon the other day, with temperatures in the 60's F., during this, our coldest spring on record so far. Was this too much "heat" for it?

The vendor said if the plants were not on sale they would have been 40 DOLLARS for the 3? gallon pot. I wouldn't pay that for a rhododendron, in that size.

Other introductions seem much better, 'Nikko Blue' for instance. As is Twist n Shout, which makes a dramatic and full display while still in nursery containers.

*Note that Bailey uses Endless Summer as a marketing name for a series of unrelated plants, and not just for the one flophead mophead

Interesting....!

I happen not to like purple smokebush - but would like to have a green one...! I looked that 'Young Lady' one up and I think I'll try to find one. Heptacodium has been a fabulous tree for me - hard to believe that it hasn't sold well for you. Sorbaria are scary! They look nice though in planting on road medians in several places in our town. I'm in the 'yellow foliage looks sick' camp :-) But I've come to realize that the best way to use yellow foliaged plants is to put a bunch of them together so they make a golden garden together, rather than have a sick-looking yellow plant amongst darker geen ones. Maybe if you displayed some together that way it would help sell them. Last year and this I'm starting to develop a 'golden path' in part of the woodland garden. So far I've used/plan to use Golden Forest Grass, Sum and Substance hosta, some yellow variegated euonymus and probably some yellow-green heucheras and golden Full Moon Japanese maple.

Thank's, Brian.

My Endless Bummer has had exactly four blooms in four years. I've heard of tricks like cutting 1/3 of new growth in spring to fertilizing the snot out of them to try and get more blooms. For the first time old wood has survived the winter and I did pay strict attention to ferts last year so if nothing improves this year, it's history. I can always put a Hosta or Hemlock in there. ;-)

tj

I'd like to know if anyone has any experience with Pieris japonica "Fire n' Ice." It's a brand new variety here in the Columbia Basin of Washington, and just a few weeks after planting these lovely $40 a piece plants, they are dead, dead, dead! I gave them acidic potting soil, wilt-pruf, transplant solution. I did everything the nursery I got them from suggested and they declined by leaps and bounds.

Interesting report -- I've seen some of these varieties in nurseries and wondered if they moved. A few of the yellow foliage shrubs are lovely (tiger eyes sumac comes to mind), but I tend to agree that many of them (particularly the caryopteris) just look sickly.

I would not expect any Pieris to be suitable for the Columbia Basin, without very careful siting and special site preparation. Note that in the interior region related plants from the same family, the native wild huckleberries, grow spontaneously only up in the mountains, where there is more moisture and less hot, dry air in the summer, and the soil is acidified by an abundance of conifers.

Pieris japonica is an east Asian species coming from places where it rains buckets in summer. If you don't see rhododendrons, azaleas and Japanese maples all around your community, you do not have the right environment for pieris.

Colored foliage plants like purple smokebush and yellow-leaved this and that have particular uses in planting design, where they then produce excitement and delight. If you always view plant varieties as stand alone objects then there will be whole swathes of them that you do not plant and enjoy. To make full use of the range of what is offered, and to realize the full potential of your ornamental gardening you must think in terms of plant combinations rather than individual, unrelated specimens.

I love yellow foliaged plants! I was just upset that I killed my 'Sunshine Blue' Caryopteris by pruning it before we had our last hard frost. The one whose name escapes me that is yellow variegated is sprouting and so is 'Petite Bleu' but not 'Sunshine' :(

I have yellow Spireas, Huecheras, Tiarellas, Hakone grass and a new yellow Dicentra and Brunnera too. I've got that yellow Clematis alpina too. Love purple but too much purple is too dark.

Purple foliage is not as "out there" as yellow or variegated leaves, you can increase interest using purple without resorting to the dominating intensity of yellow or the clownishness of variegation.

I just ordered 2 seven son flower plants, maybe the majority of your customers only recognize the super-common plants.

Must have gotten luck with the endless summer. Got a 1 gallon before had any blooms, Has about 3 that are HUGE and about 6 still opening up. But they are part shade and the weather here as of now probably helps too. I love it.

For the sake of accuracy I'd like to reiterate that Endless Summer is not a plant but rather a registered trademark used to promote several different hydrangea cultivars.

Here is a link that might be useful: The First hydrangeas that bloom all season long : Endless Summer® Collection