I am trying them for the first time myself. So far so good.

I have a hybrid, "Lemon" something or other. Made it through the season, leafing out now.

Mississippi coast

Terry

I've been looking for a few ornamental trees and Kousa keeps coming up. Also interested in a weeping cherry (Snow Fountain) not finding any though - at least not local.
Sorry, no suggestions of how well they do - I'm just wondering too how well they would do.

I now have two young kousa-florida hybrids of Big Box origin, one white and one pink, and both did quite well through last summer in what I would ignorantly speculate are fairly ideal conditions for down here (moist, black soil and shaded by a windbreak of River Birch to their south). Foliage held up well in the heat and turned a nice red in the fall. The white one has a flower bud and the pink one has four (Hooah!). Stay tuned, I guess.

I may try one in a sunnier--but still moist--location this year if I see one I like that isn't too expensive to lose. UF Horticulture Dept. says it's hard to have too many of them.

Never did buy the Venus with all the flower buds I was looking at last spring. Probably just as well considering what they were asking for it.

About three years ago at the PJC Flower Show in Milton they were giving away a free dogwood. I took one and found out once I got home and got them separated that I actually had 10. I planted them in 1 gallon pots, as they were only about a foot high. Gave half to my mom and I kept half. Turns out that they were Chinese dogwoods. I don't like them. They sprout from the roots like crepe myrtles, have a bushy habit rather than the loose layered look of the native Florida dogwoods. I gave all mine away last fall--they were already 8' tall, still in the pots, grown through them in fact into the ground. Out of the five I gave away, four of them lived I'm told. So, yes, I would say they're easy to grow here. I live about 35 miles north of Pensacola, FL