As for David Pilling´s no-care ecosystem (and who among us would tell David Pilling how to garden,) lazy and untutored people like me plant things that have flourished in the neighbors´ gardens, such as bugbane, siberian iris, hemerocallis, hyacinthoides, peony, silene, narcissus, and then stand back and get out of the way. The problem with this method is that a pachypodium namaquensum (?sp) or a Brunschweigia is never going to pop up in the middle of it. Most of us want to grow the plants that enchant and intrigue us and not be limited to those from any natural ecosystem or neighborhood garden. This takes some doing, and of course we want to hover and watch the results. Taken to an extreme, in Massachusetts this vigilance can amount to running a beautiful intensive care unit for plants on life support. I wish I had the time or the patience to do this. I´m just the wrong person. Things are quite different in my southern Mexican garden, where the trick lies in keeping things from growing and the best gardening tool is the machete. The Megaskepasma erythrochlamis is ten feet tall. Jane Sargent _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…