evergreens in an enclosed 'outdoor' room

[squid_ink]

We've enclosed part of our outside deck ... it's now an enclosed porch. There is an area of dirt where I would like to have an 'indoor' garden, I think it would look nice. It will resemble a rock garden

Comments

[rhysande]

If you're happy with the golden euonynus in your yard you can probably propagate new plants for your enclosed porch from stem cuttings. That way you'll be sure you've got a cultivar that behaves the way you expect it to.

Are you wanting evergreen shrubs because you need a year round screen, don't want to mess with cleaning up dropped leaves in your enclosed porch every fall, or other reasons? I ask because there are a number of deciduous plants and shrubs that are quite striking and interesting in a winter garden, especially when you've got some plainer evergreen such as box or yew planted with them. Speaking of yew, you might want to add that to the list, as well as juniper and cryptomeria 'Nana'.

What lovely camellia selections! I've heard there were some "cold hardy" varieties being developed, but they still sound like they need too much fussy winter protection in zone 6 for me. Maybe when they get un-fussy zone 5 hardy plants or our cold hardiness zone goes up to a solid zone 7 I'll try some. Or when retirement comes and we move to happy-dreamy-ideal-gardening-conditions land. For the time being they're just expensive annuals to me. But I sure do love them.

[squid_ink]

I want to get the evergreens in and see how much room I have to monkey around with... as I said above, somewhere (not even sure where) I have ALOT of plants that go into that space when springtime rolls around.

I have many of the above plants outside and yes they're lovely but I'm not sure I want to put them in the indoor rock garden yet. It's still a work in progress

I've been dragging those camellias in and out of the house for a year now but it's so worth it. BEAUTIFUL flowers!! love them so much but yes they're fussy in this zone.