Hi 'Madison',

I am not far from you. I live in Toney.

I have the old fashion orange day lilies if you are interested in any of them. I have plenty - they all need separated - they are so compact I don't get many actual lilies. So if you would like some I will gladly share.

I have a Mimosa tree. Height might be more than you are looking for. My birds and butterflies love it. I brought it with me from Texas, but it is huge. The ones at my mom's in Texas did not get this big. The canopy is about 35' it is probably right at 25'tall; but it is stuck between a oak and a magnolia so it really had to fight for sunlight. That might be why it reached so high.

I think i will actually let my husband trim it this year. He has wanted to take a chainsaw after it for years now, so i will have to watch him carefully so that he doesn't 'slip' and cut the whole tree down. I have volunteers all over the yard - if you want one of them.

Hi debrah,

Mimosas are beautiful but oh-so invasive. I couldn't bring myself to plant one. Besides, I have a couple of 50' ones in the treeline!

I might take you up on that offer of daylilies. I think they are probably the same ones I have. I need to divide mine, too.

I agree about the Mimosa. I dig them up out of the yard every time I see another one, so they are pretty much under control.

I have some wild violets - they are also invasive, you might want to throw them down the swale. They do take over, so it would be more like ground cover.

Chocolate mint - invasive. Mine grows in my flower beds, blends in with the grass and down a stone wall behind my waterfall (project). I love it when the mower runs over it, the whole yard smells like mint. It will grow in wet or dry environment. It is a dark purple with small violet flowers.

After commenting the other day I went outside and i have a Prim rose coming up. Mine is about 10 - 12' tall. I thought it was only suppose to bloom in the spring, but it bloomed several times last year. I was going to send a link but, none of the 'prim rose' pictures look like my tree. So it must be called something else. It has pink flowers that sorta of look like a Hibiscus. The one growing is only about 12" high - i don't know if you want to start with something that small. They are pretty trees and the humming birds love it.

If you are interested let me know.

About daylilies... I lived in OH for years & there are hundreds of different ones that grow fine up there, so I think they would be plenty warm in your yard. 11 degrees isn't cold at all if you're a daylily. They come in all shades of yellow, orange, red, pink, purple... A lot of them smell really good, too, and are actually tall enough to sniff. The common orange ditch-lilies are not as prevalent on the sides of the road down here where I live now as they were in OH. They are also the tallest daylilies I know of. Most of the ones I have grown were about knee-high.

Regarding the mimosa-chopping husband... don't worry if he does that. You can't kill a mimosa by chopping it down. I've chopped one away from a big stump embedded in my chain-link fence repeatedly, many times each year, for 4 years (and obviously the stump that was already there was the result of someone chopping at it before me) and it just keeps going... Yep, just looked out the window, time to begin this year's battle, about a dozen "branches" coming off the stump, growing almost fast enough to watch.

My yard is practically a carpet of wild violets. However, they are native, so they are not what I would call invasive. Prolific, yes. A pain in my garden, oh yeah. But they belong here so I don't worry about them.

Besides, they don't fill in enough to smother out the grass and other tall weeds, so they won't serve my purpose.

Just to follow-up, for the trees I decided on crabapples. Still pondering the edging plant although daylilies are a top contender.