As Glen Pace points out,a lot of eucomis do fine in cold areas with reliable snow cover. Here, one of two patches of E. vandermerweii came through last winter in the open garden and bloomed beautifully this summer, despite the fact that like everyone else we had a totally bizarre winter, were out weeding in shirtsleeves in early January, and had some hard freezes before our famous 10 feet of snow in 10 days provided insurance for the rest of the winter. The other patch disappeared conmpletely, as did Cameron McMaster's E. autumnalis 'Bedford Form', which tries to be evergreen (never a good indication of hardiness). E. comosa 'Peace Candles' seems indestructible everywhere, even in the salty, sandy roadside garden, and the various purple-leaved pink-flowered plants I have (mostly my own seedlings), variously described as hybrids of E. autumnalis, E. pallidiflora, and E. comosa, are positively rampant. E. bicolor is grand once it comes up - it's a late emerger -and E. montana hangs in there and occaisonally blooms, but I haven't yet figured out how to make it really happy. One effort with E. humilis failed, but I should try it again, as it "ought" to be as hardy as the rest. I'm keeping my E. schjiffii under wraps -after 2 years, they still haven't really adapted to the northern hemisphere, though they're slowly getting there. The other half of the equation for eucomis, I think, is reasonably cool summer temps (at night, anyway) and plenty of summer rainfall or watering. Remember that they come from a part of the world (eastern Cape) where virtually all of the rainfall, which is comparable to our annual precipitation here in Oswego, falls during the summer. All this illustrates is the idiocy of using USDA hardiness zones for plants from climates very different from continental... Ellen Ellen Hornig Seneca Hill Perennials 3712 County Route 57 Oswego NY 13126 USA http://www.senecahillperennials.com/