In your other thread (http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/pests/msg0512120720537.html?4), on May 24 at20:51 you said: "Oh my gosh, yes!!! we did spray about a week or two ago for weeds! :-( What is going to happen now! Will all the leaves drop off?? " So, is that reference to herbicide the same as above? If so, it still could have affected the two trees differently. Effects determined by the dose (how much each tree received) and which direction the breeze/wind was blowing. Here is a link that might be useful: your other thread

I am not in your zone, but I do love redbuds and have several varieties. I love Forest Pansy, but should disclose that without a fair amount of sun it just turns into dark, not red, leaves, similar to many of the Japanese maples. Obviously if you plant it as an understory tree like most redbuds want, the window of opportunity for really red leaves is slim, as the tree will no longer be red when the trees above it are in full leaf. Best location seems to be almost full sun if you want to keep it red. Of course, it has an oversized leaf, so that also means that it will need to be monitored more often to make sure it does not wilt down, which many of the fancies will do. I do offer up the Hearts of Gold is another newer variety that is supposed to do well out in full or almost full sunlight, with oversized leaves and the color of a golden delicious apple. What a beauty. All of these newer varieties were accidental seedlings discovered by someone who caught that they were special, many at a young age. Yes, they are patented and propagated via graft, so you are supposed to have a permit to produce more of these trees. Also, a plus for some, these guys tend to set very little, if any, seed. Lavender Twist will set less than 30 pods on an adult tree, all 25% the size of a normal pod, all sterile. I have seen seed for Forest Pansy offered on Ebay with the disclaimer that it may not breed true, but I am very suspicious that the seed may have been harvested from any branches belonging to the root parent, making it plain old redbud from the forest, but not a Forest Pansy. Don't forget some of the older varieties - Oklahoma redbud, the Texas redbud, and the weeping redbud, Traveller. Traveller is the one I want, but couldn't find at anywhere a resonable price. My Lavender Twist is similar, but not the same. A problem that I do not see addressed is predation of young trees by deer. Of course, in NJ, deer prey on most plants. They will chomp off a 2 or 3 year old tree at the base, and strip the leaves off of the lower limbs of older trees. Imagine my surprise to walk out and see a whole you could drive a car through in my Lavender Twist. They had eaten leaves, branches, twigs, everything but the trunk. I know that many do not like to hear this, but they are as bad as any noxious pest we freely kill - rats, mice, or groundhogs, for a few. So destructive, populations soaring as they have found new buffets of food as the gardeners foolishly believe that there is anything you can grow that the deer will not learn to eat. OK, that was my pet peeve for the day. Plant those redbuds, make the world a more beautiful place, one tree at a time. Happy gardening!

djwfrk: Not at all. I actually enjoy working with ESL kids at school, many of them from Hispanic countries. I have told the "landscape workers" in Spanish (because they speak no English) not to break my garden fences, to no avail. They can't even read Spanish. I am virtually in tears about the latest destruction to the Adirondack fencing around my hosta garden. Several sections are lying on the ground all torn to pieces, like garbage, and the protective foam tubing I placed on top is ripped to shreds by these ignoramuses. It looks like a city dump, thanks to them, at $5-6/section! They have also knocked down quite a few of my plant markers. I am forever having to retrieve the plant markers from the ground and put them back on their supports. I have spent backbreaking labor and funds for patching compound repairing the really nice faux stone garden edging that they busted ugly holes in. These guys are knowledgeable landscape workers like I'm six feet tall (I am, in fact, 5'2"). They do not seem to have much knowledge about gardening at all, just how to flail about with weed-whackers and blowers. Their mowing is laughable. Also, I see a different crew each time. There are places in this area where it is well known that illegals congregate to pick up day labor jobs. Many contractors, like landscape companies, go over in the morning to these places to pick up workers for the day. The illegals are happy to work for minimum pay because they are limited in what jobs they can obtain. So the quality of work is about on a par with absolute amateurs, because in effect, that's exactly what they are. And the co-op couldn't care less. They are penny wise and pound foolish when it comes to landscaping. They could care less if my fencing gets ripped up, plants get trampled, etc. Here is an article from a local Queens news source: Day laborers busted on 69th Street The police arrested 10 immigrants on Tuesday on charges that they blocked a sidewalk at a popular gathering place for day laborers in Jackson Heights, Queens, the chief spokesman of the Police Department said. The arrests came in response to repeated calls from neighborhood residents complaining about the laborers "most of them undocumented" who congregate every day at the intersection of Broadway, 37th Avenue and 69th Street, said the spokesman, Paul J. Browne. “Police responded to community complaints about them blocking the sidewalk and congregating,” Mr. Browne said, adding that there were 50 to 60 workers at the location on Tuesday morning before the arrests. “We responded and asked them to disperse,” Mr. Brown said. “All but 10 of them did.” _______________________ There is little doubt, based on what I've seen and my conversations with them, that these "landscape workers" are undocumented aliens. So, I have spent endless hours researching, planning, buying materials, digging, hauling heavy bags of soil and mulch, planting, watering, weeding, etc. so that these "landscape workers" can come and lay waste to all my efforts. I'm sure you would love them, too, if you could but see the latest damage. Life in the big city.

By "extending the bed" are you referring extending the left-corner bed (where the smokebush is located? The distance between the edge of that bed to the crown of that norway maple on the same side is about 20+ feet... that Norway is sick and my guess is that the municipality will have to cut it down in a few years... at which time they will replant with a small tree thereby opening up that whole side again for many years to come. So how tall and wide should i expect an eastern redbud to grow given my short growing season/chilly winters ?