What a neat Rock Garden!I especially like the addition of succulent plants.I would bring your Euphorbia specimens indoors during your cold winters-Place them near a bright window.

I love the palms, bannana and musa basjoo. Do these really overwinter for you in Chicago? I love the tropical look of these plants but figured they'd never survive my climate. I'll definitly be doing some research on these plants. I'd love to incorporate these into and area that I will be redoing in a year or two.

Everything you see there unfortunately was planted within this year. The palm was planted on March 3rd, and experienced some snow (You can see those pics in the Palms & Cyads forum) and a low temp of 19F without a scratch (and it was just planted, so it was used to being in room temp) 5 months later it is doing just fine! The bananas were planted in June, and I havnt had a chance to overwinter them yet (well duh) But I'm sure they will do fine with some mulch, and also if they were here from the start they would be much larger then these newly planted ones. Give em' a try!

Beautiful garden but....are you really planing to leave those plants for the winter? If so, I don't think you will see them again, hmmmmm.....

I thought I was in zone denial. LOL!!! I bring my tropicals in the house. I want to see them next summer.

Yea actually the Windmill Palm is hardy to around -10F and the bananas somewhere in that area too, along with some muclching, leaves, snow cover and xmas lights for coldest nights everything will be fine.

But last winter we hit -20. What will you do if we get the same winter this year?

We actually hit -10F, no you didnt hit -20 in PA unless you are really north and high up or something. The winters before that here were -3.1F -3.3F and 5F nd -4.0F Plus were expected to have an El Nino year which will bring much warmer temps. I'm not worried at all.

Nice,supernice