Hosta lovers, it's only fitting that you immortalize deceased plants as well as those that haven't yet said their final good-byes by placing plant markers every 6 inches throughout the garden.

Q: I remember reading about a variety of Jasmine that was suitable for the Middle South, could tolerate partial shade & reached 6-8 feet against a trellis. I want to use that in my landscaping this spring & cannot locate what I thought I had found some months ago? This was less viney than Carolina Jasmine & did not get that tall.

Is there such a specimen?

Sarah

Q:I don't know if I have Gophers, voles or moles, or all of the above. I need to get them out of my veggie garden. They have pulled several whole heads of red lettuce into the ground, over night. Now they are working on the cabbage. I am missing half of my onions and my fruit trees aren't getting watered correctly because of the holes. I have about a half acre in fruit trees and garden. What can I use for a quick fix?
Sincerely,
Lacy J

Q: I have a golden raintree that has not bloomed. It is about 12 feet tall and the trunk circumference is 12 inches about 12 inches from the ground. I selected this tree because of the blooms and seed pods. It is pretty anyway but when will it bloom? I must be doing something wrong.
Thanks,
Theresa

Maybe I'm losing my mind, but last night as I was relaxing with a cold Sam Adams (the beer, not the patriot), I noticed brilliant yellow flashes winking on and off in the still evening air.

Creative Readers,
Have you ever felt stifled and ham-strung by  snooty homeowner associations that won't let you paint your house orange,  magenta, or other gaudy colors because they're not "tasteful"? Well, here's an  easy way to fight back. Just plant flowers with those very same colors. The  new Big Sky series of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is just  the ticket.

Now the original purple coneflower produced blossoms of  lavender-pink, rose, or white. Then ItSaul Plants in Alpharetta, Georgia  crossed E. purpurea with its cousin, the yellow coneflower (E.  paradoxa). Voila! Blooms in colors so screamingly loud you'll have to wear  earplugs at night!

The one pictured  is 'Sunset,' featuring shocking, golden-orange blooms with a red-orange cone.  Want something even more outrageous? Try neon-magenta 'Fatal Attraction"  (named, no doubt, for the movie that proved to be a terrible choice to take a  first date). Or rich golden-yellow 'Harvest Moon.' As an added bonus, you'll  notice that unlike ordinary purple coneflower, these new ones are pleasantly fragrant.

Garden centers often carry the Big Sky series, but if the one near  you doesn't, try www.parkseed.com. And be  gaudy little boys and girls.

Q: Dear Steve, I enjoy your part of the magazine so much. Please tell me how to make insecticidal soap to spray on my daylilies that have tiny tiny white bugs. Thanks.

Q: Hello Mr. Grumpy....
I am plagued with "Bore Beetles".  They are attacking our Bradford pears.  One Bradford pear is dead...however there are several more with the telltale holes of the beetles are obivous.
How can I rid the tree of this pest?
Thanks,
Sandy from Gonzales, La.

A: Dear Sandy,
Even Grumpy, as brilliant as he is, needs a little more info to diagnose the problem. Can you describe the holes? Do they occur in evenly spaced horizontal or vertical rows? Have you ever noticed what look like "toothpicks" of sawdust attached to the trunk? How long ago was it that your pears started declining?
Grumpy

Q: I only noticed the holes in the fall of 07.  The holes are horizontal and look like they are evenly drilled.  I really thought this tree was going to bloom and bud out.....but it didn't make it.
Sandy

A: Mystery solved. Borers are not the problem. The holes were drilled by a sapsucker. This bird drills holes in the bark and licks the sap that comes out. Maples and fruit trees (Bradford pear is a kind of fruit tree, even though the fruits are tiny)  are favorites. The holes have nothing to do with the death of the tree. It must have been weakened by some other factor. Bradford pears are short-term trees due to pest and disease problems and a propensity to break up in storms. You'll need to replace yours with something else. Grumpy 

Well......THANK YOU Grumpy!! I have looked at each and every tree and the little darlings have tapped a few others. I would have never suspected such a cute little bird. Thanks, Sandy

Q: I have 2 gardenias that are covered in black soot. I have seen tiny little white bugs flying around them (I assume these are white flies?) I would like to clear up the white fly/soot problem, as well as relocate these two plants. Each is about 4ft. tall and 5ft wide. I live in Lexington, SC, and our soil is quite sandy. Any advice you can offer would be appreciated. And I just loved your column in Southern Living and am so glad I found your blog! - Candy Hayes
Lexington, SC

Q: I am the fortunate recipient of five, count 'em five gorgeous mature (4' x 4') boxwood shrubs from a neighbor's landscape. I love boxwoods, but have never owned, nor cared for them. Can you tell me what I should do when planting and caring for them to ensure their continued success?

Thanks,
Carollynn

Q: How big of a root ball needs to be dug to transplant a crepe myrtle? I have one that is an off-shoot of a larger tree...the one I want to transplant is now about 10 feet tall, but has few side branches. I would like to miove it to my back yard, but am not sure if I can dig a rootball that is large enough....also can I do it this time of year?? Thanks in advance. - Patricia

Q: I just found you on SouthernLiving.com (enjoyed you in the magazine) & was reading the crepe myrtle info. We cut an older mature plant down because it was too close to a new driveway :-( but I now have suckers coming up further in the yard. Last year I placed a tomato cage around it so it wouldn't get mowed down. I now need to know how to train it into a natural looking plant from the ground up. Thank you very much in advance.
-Linda

Curb your hormones, ladies. I know this shot of my old buddy, Felder Rushing, is bound to give you the tingles. Felder is probably the South's best-known gardening personality, thanks to his offbeat viewpoint, irreverent sense of humor, wealth of knowledge, and shameless self-promotion. Check out his website at www.felderrushing.net. He and I co-wrote Passalong Plants (University of North Carolina Press, 1994), an award-winning book whose mind-boggling sales allowed us to choose between sending our respective kids to college or traveling extensively to exotic faraway lands. After carefully considering the matter for what seemed like minutes, we packed our bags and hit the road. College is overrated. 

Mike Dubinovsky, co-owner of Top Tropicals nursery near Punta Gorda, Florida ships his plants all over the country and elsewhere. Quite a few of his customers kill these nice plants by doing stupid things. (Personal note: Once when I worked in a Maryland nursery, a customer brought back a dead tree and demanded a refund. When I asked to see the tree, I saw the trunk was charred. She had burned it. I told her the use of napalm voided the guarantee. I guess I should have spelled that out more forcefully when she bought it.)

Anyway, Mike says one of the most common ways his customers kill his plants is by transplanting them into pots that are too big. They receive a plant with a 6-inch root ball in the mail and immediately plant it into a 14-inch pot. Before they can sneeze, it croaks. Why? Number one, it doesn't need all of that extra room right away. Like a jet-lagged traveler, it needs to recover a while from its journey. Second, after you water it, the new plant lacks the root system necessary to cope with a huge, new pot filled with wet soil. The soil stays wet too long, the roots rot, and the plant goes to that big compost heap in the sky. Mike says wait until the new plant is actively growing -- as signaled by by lush new shoots and leaves -- before giving the roots the extra space.

SO DON'T WATERBOARD NEW PLANTS!  It may not be torture, but as President Bush might say, it will avoid your guarantee.   

During my recent visit to Top Tropicals nursery in south Florida, owner Mike Dubinovsky let me experience the effects of miracle fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum). Native to Africa, this bush bears small, red fruits that produce a protein that inhibits the perception of sour taste for hours. Once you eat a miracle fruit, it makes even the sourest lemon taste sweet as candy. Mike says eating a miracle fruit makes beer taste like Coke. I'd rather have beer taste like beer, but I can say that miracle fruit enhances the flavor of vodka. It's an Absolut miracle! You can order miracle fruit at www.TopTropicals.com.

photo courtesy of TopTropicals.com

Yesterday I visited Mike Dubinovsky and Tatiana Anderson, two very interesting people who grew tired of the Russian cold and moved to near Punta Gorda in south Florida to start a mail-order nursery specializing in rare tropical plants called Top Tropicals. They have over 800 different kinds of tropical fruits, fragrant plants, spice plants like cinnamon and allspice, and an incredible array of flowering vines, shrubs, and trees. In a very short time, they have built a business that ships to all over the country and the world. The impetus for their growth is that people up north where it's cold in winter want weird and colorful tropical plants too. Mike recently shipped a gardenia to somebody in Alaska. Somebody in Fairbanks now probably has their only dog sled with a gardenia bush. Check out the nursery at www.TopTropicals.com.

It's hard for people to visit Mike and Tatiana because they don't exactly live in the center of town. I could say they live in the middle of nowhere, but that's a bit generous. Actually, they live on the far edge of it. There is nothing around for miles and miles except for old citrus groves, palmetto scrub, and fire ants. Oh, an one other thing -- the Paradise RV Park. Yes, hundreds of retired people holed up in RV's and campers have found paradise in south Florida's version of the Bonneville Salt Flats. What do they do all day? Compete to see who has the biggest blood clot? Catch a bus to the nearest Baskin Robbins to try all 21 flavors of oxygen? Hey, if this is truly paradise, send me in the other direction. It can't be any hotter and the people there are bound to be more fun.

Today finds me working on a story at Walt Disney World in Orlando. So far I have avoided being run over by legions of runaway strollers, but who knows what the future holds.

Last night at dinner, photographer Ralph Anderson convinced me to try my first shot of Jagermeister, the renowned liqueur employed by frat boys around the world to prove their manhood and send their brains into orbit. I thought it tasted like super Robitussin. Shortly after downing it, I did the following things:

* Showed new dance moves to Gloria Estefan

* Tatooed "It's A Small World After All" on my forehead

* Core-aerated the flan at "Bongos" restaurant

* Opened the world's largest edible worm farm

Lucky Ralph didn't talk me into a second shot.

Things have a way of working out, even when it seems that the universe is intent on biting your posterior. This week, I had to fly to Charlotte with photographer Ralphie Anderson to do a story on Wing Haven Gardens. Wing Haven is a beautiful bird and wildlife sanctuary right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. You should visit there today -- right this morning, preferably. Check it out at www.winghavengardens.com. If you happen to run into me, please do not bow. It makes Ralphie uncomfortable.

Anyway, when you look at the photos that appear in SL, it looks like we always operate under ideal conditions. I wish we did -- it would make it easier to schedule my afternoon massage. But sometimes the weather stinks. Like yesterday in Charlotte. I fly up here from Birmingham where it's warm and sunny and nice and when I arrive in Charlotte, it's 49 degrees, windier than a politician, overcast, and raining. It's supposed to stay that way the whole time I'm here. This means our pictures won't have any sunlight in them, no matter how wide I smile. It's at times like these that I look to the heavens, drop to my knees, and howl, "How have I offended thee?"

Ladies, if you need any more proof that you’re married to an absolute moron, walk outside and see what he just finished doing to your lovely crepe myrtles. After losing a huge bet on underdog Davidson to upset Kansas in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, he’s worried about a big guy named Vinnie showing up to break his kneecaps. To relieve his anxiety, he’s cut down the crepe myrtles into ugly stumps, which is what his legs will look like shortly. After the hospital releases him, please explain three things. First, crepe myrtles are trees and look awful when pruned back every year. The skinny new branches won’t be strong enough to hold up the flowers. Second, Davidson’s fate rested on the shoulders of a player with the same first name as me and I couldn’t hit a three-pointer if the hoop was the size of Saturn’s rings. Finally, never bet with a guy named Vinnie. Bet with Pat.   

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Crepe Myrtle Care from SouthernLiving.com
• Stop! Don't Chop Crepe Myrtles!
• Beginner's Guide to Crepe Myrtles
• Crepe Myrtle Pruning Tips
• Crepe Murder