There may not be as many options as you would like. Here in Los Osos it is a hot day if we make it into the 70's during the Summer and we are often fogged in totally with temps in the 60's. What is classed as "early" by mainstream growers may not ripen here until late summer and those which are classed as "late" will simply never ripen--not enough heat units. I'm not all that familiar with the climate in Eureka, and it's probably colder in the Winter, which is a good thing for chill, but you need to be realistic and remember that "early" or "midseason" could easily mean "late" in the area. "Late" could mean "never". It would be helpful to talk to others in the immediate area to see what has worked for them. Microclimates, heat pockets, south-facing exposures, etc., can all be helpful, but sometimes the selection of what will actually work is not that great.

Thanks, Kathy, for adding to the conversation about this. She actually tells a story about "Prince Charlie's Rose" which was told her as recounted through the records of Edrom Nurseries by Alex Duguid. I'll just quote: After the battle of Prestonpans in 1745, where Charles Stuart defeated the Government troops ... on the evening of that day a reception was held in the ballroom of Holyrood Palace at which the prince (Charles Stuart or Bonnie Prince Charlie) wore on his coat a double white rose. On the morning after the prince had gone the chambermaid found the rose left on the dressing-table in the bedroom. She took it home to her mother, a keen gardener, who managed to root the rose spray. Eventually the resulting plant was planted in the gardens of Carberry Towers ... where it flourished... In 1926 when the Misses Logan-Home moved the Edrom Nurseries to Silverwells, near Coldingham, the rose was planted there and soon developed into a large bush, increasing itself by suckers. Again when I came to Ballater in 1979 I took a plant of this rose with me, where it is spreading and flowering freely. Approximately 3 feet high, it produces many small double white flowers every summer. She says then that she still has a plant of Prince Charlie's rose which was given to her by this man named Alex Duguid, who worked for many years with the Misses Logan-Home at Edrom Nurseries.

Thanks for getting the joke, gardengal. It was a pleasure to demonstrate that I can troll my own response better than anyone else can. Of course Sequoiadendron is much hardier. But the problem is it is also much more suspectible to disease caused by our muggy summer conditions. If you were to blend the Mason-Dixon line with the new USDA zn 6/zn 7 line, you would get an approximation of the east coast boundary between areas where Sequoia (coastal redwood) and Sequoiadendron could be grown on the east coast. Sequoia south of it, obviously, and Sequoiadendron north of it. Even north of the Mason-Dixon line, the several Sequoiadendron at zn 7 Planting Fields arboretum looked pretty bad. OTOH I'm pretty sure I saw one at a garden in Carlisle, PA, zn 6, that looked reasonably well. Nights there are probably a wee bit cooler, and I suspect you could grow them all the way down to Georgia on the highest mountain tops that stay in the 50s at night. Go too far north though, even zn 7 is still going to be too cold for Sequoias. One supposes that the Polly Hill arboretum, for example, has tried them and they aren't on the plant list for a reason. (still meaning to email them about strange tales of a monkey puzzle that dies back in some years yet persists)

Robert, Oh, I cannot believe you have one. You have EVERYTHING there! I saw a photo once of a trifoliate orange fence. They planted those killer trees about two feet from one another, and every year, using chain saws and, I assume, wearing suits of armor, they cut them back almost to bare trunks....you know, I think the term would be that the trees were pollarded. It made an incredibly dense fence that absolutely nothing could penetrate. Personally, I wouldn't plant that kind of fence, but if I had a neighbor like Ezzirah's, I might be tempted to do so. Ezzirah, A neighbor like that would drive me insane. Actually, we had a neighbor like that in Fort Worth, except the trees weren't actually anything they planted....they were hackberry trees that had grown up near the fence line in their yard many years earlier when it was her mother's house. It was an older neighborhood (the neighborhood in which I had grown up) and the trees were very tall and had grown right through the chain link fence so the fence was embedded inside the trees. First we put up a wooden privacy fence, so we didn't have to look at the tree trunks with the fence right in the middle of them. Then, whenever the trees came over the privacy fence, I pruned the limbs back, and I pruned them up as high as I could reach with a pole pruner to give us more sun. Did she like it? No, but she didn't like anyone or anything, so it was just one more thing to make her unhappy. Some people are determined to be 'difficult' and it sounds like you may have that kind of neighbor, which is just so unfortunate. I feel like we're pretty lucky. We're in our early 50s now, and that really was the only truly unpleasant neighbor we've ever had. All the neighbors we have here in our little rural community are WONDERFUL and I am so thankful that we have kind, gracious, friendly, loving neighbors. It makes life so much more pleasant. Remember the old saying "Good fences make good neighbors." Good luck with the neighbor/fence/tree issue. I suspect it may cause you some frustration. Dawn