Hi. My name is Amanda and I'm a garden-a-holic. LOL. Seriously though, I only began gardening this year and already have plans for probably the next two or three years. I live in Chattanooga in what used to be my in-laws' house. When we moved in, there were already some hostas, two crepe myrtles, several azaleas, forsythias, two peonies, and a few other things. Well, I am working towards ridding myself of the forsythia. They are lovely, don't get me wrong, but I find them entirely too evasive. And to me, it is simply too much work to keep them trimmed back to a manageable size for something that blooms for only a week or two. I can happily say that I've added much more than taken away. I have planted cannas, daylilies, roses, bearded irises, and clematis. I definitely have plans for more roses and daylilies and cannas - just not sure where I will place everything. I am currently trying my hand at rooting some rose cuttings. I have Seven Sisters, Mr. Lincoln, and Climbing Blaze all struck. It is hard to not check for roots, as I am not known for my patience, but I have managed to leave them alone for the short time they have been in their pots. Finally, my husband and I are anxiously awaiting the birth of our second son. My due date is August 25th, but it could honestly be any day now. Our first son is 7-1/2 years old, so this is almost like having a first all over again. Although we're certainly out of practice, we're looking forward to experiencing all the 'firsts' all over again.

I have two very large gardenias that are growing happily in equally large plastic pots. They have just about bloomed out now, but they probably had three hundred flowers this summer. The fragrance was intoxicating. Basically, I leave them outside until the weather really gets chilly...like down into the mid or low 20s (December). I then shove them into my south-facing garage where they stay until the weather warms up a bit. The garage is part of the main house, but it doesn't have supplemental heat during the winter. It gets chilly not not overly cold. I move them out during nice weather and back in during bad weather. It sounds like an awful routine, but the plants love it. By the time mid-March rolls around, I move them out to their summer home (which is about fifteen feet from their winter home). I think I'm going to do some selective pruning this year, because the plants really are getting huge. One of them is almost six feet tall. A friend suggested that I add coffee grounds from the local Starbucks to my usual top-dressing last spring. It does seem to have boosted blooms and plant growth this summer. I have at least one photo up at Flickr.com. Look for Michael Steven or check the flower forum for "gardenia." I would add a photo here, but I don't know how. Michael

Go ahead and join - you can do it at the sale Saturday. Everybody is extremely friendly - no snobs allowed. There won't be another meeting until September, so you have plenty of time to get it on your calendar. There are only 5 or 6 meetings a year - Sept, Oct,(can't remember if there is a Nov. meeting), Feb - Apr. Membership is very inexpensive and one of the big perks is being able to buy osmocote at the wholesale price. Even if you never attended another meeting, the savings on that fertilizer alone is worth joining. You can't help but learn how to grow Hostas if you do attend the meetings - or at least learn that yours are not the only ones that look terrible after Summer starts and that the beautiful photos you see in magazines and plant catalogs are either taken in the Spring or up North!

Hi everybody, I'm a newbee. I've gardened in Memphis for a year, but live close to Covington. I grow all kinds of perennials, a food garden (about 20 x 50'), and roses. I have crepe myrtles, shrubs, evergreens, dogwoods, and all kinds of traded flowers I just stuck in the ground and kept alive. A lot of it was here when we bought the place, and the rest has been added over the years by us. I moved 12 tea roses to another location in my yard at the beginning of July (eeek!), after researching how to do it safely, and now they are full of leaves and flowering out. Then, my friend and neighbor, who is a plant rookie, bought us both an Eden climbing rose. She said she had lived there ove 20 years, and SHE WANTED HER YARD TO LOOK NICE. She then said we needed to go in together on a rose order of English roses. HAH! She said ten roses each. I ended up getting 24 roses in all, and I'm now the official baby rose nurse until they get planted when the weather cools off. I didn't know that it was going to get over 104 degrees during the time when they were supposed to arrive. NOT TO WORRY. My husband, the ever present plant genius, told me how to keep them from frying. I took them into my bathroom, unwrapped them, and watered them with cool water from the shower. Then I potted them up to 1 gallon pots (they were only band sized rooted cuttings), watering the soil before putting it around their sensitive roots. THEN, I prepared a bed in partial shade in the back of some evergreen bushes on the shady cool side of my house, by using 4x4 timbers stacked two high, and filled that with damp peat moss. (All this in 104 degree weather) Then I BURIED the pots up to their rims in the peat moss bed. Every day I misted them 5 times a day. Every one is living and only had maybe one yellow leaf, and one is even putting out flowers (actually one flower, but it IS a beautiful one) The main thing with pots is that the roots get overheated, and the damp peat moss takes care of that. You could bury the pots directly in the dirt, but in 104 degree weather you might heat stroke out yourself digging all those holes!!! The peat moss is pretty expensive, but you can use it elsewhere when you don't need it any more. The second batch of roses (six bands) came yesterday in the mail, and it was so hot I was afraid to even put them in the peat moss bed. So, again my genius husband told me to just set them on the porch, and bring them inside the house when it got hot. And when the weather cooled down to the 90's, THEN put them in the peat moss bed. (He really is a genius. He's the one that designed all the flower beds in our yard) I think I've lost my mind ordering roses during a heat wave. I probably should be posting this in the rose forum, but y'all were talking about West Tennessee gardeners, and here I am! BTW, I also do a LOT of plant research on the internet, and have a huge inventory of info that I've collected over the years.