Ever since I've been gardening I've received catalogs and ordered from Wayside Gardens. Their products are always very good quality and I have never been disappointed. When we lived up north, my husband and I had a Dawn Redwood growing in our yard. It is a fast growing tree and quite beautiful with its feathery type leaves. Since we've lived in Florida, we've wondered if we could possibly grow a Dawn Redwood here but never really looked into it. A few days ago the most recent Wayside Gardens catalog arrived in the mail and there on page 27 was a Metasequoia glyptostroboides aka Dawn Redwood. The description indicated it grows in zones 5-9.

Aha! Here's our chance to finally add a Dawn Redwood to our landscape we said. Then we started thinking - suppose it's not salt tolerant? Being so close to the water, can it take the salt exposure? I decided to contact Wayside and find out. I sent an email yesterday and received an answer about an hour ago - not exactly the answer I was hoping for but that's ok. Short answer - no it is not salt tolerant so we can still only dream of having this stately tree in our landscape. But here's the really cool thing that took a little sting out of the finding. I receive periodic emails from Chris at Wayside so I decided to reply and ask my question. I got a quick response saying that my question was being redirected to one of their horticulturists. The second response was sure enough from a horticulturist. How great is that! Not only do they acknowledge email requests, they actually respond when they say they will. Now that is great customer service.

Needless to say we are both disappointed but we'd rather dream about it than do the wrong thing by exposing the tree to the wrong elements and losing it. So we have our answer and will need to think about other trees to plant. I know we're going to add some pines. Guess I'll just have to start looking through some of my southern landscaping books and see what else strikes our fancy. Happy Florida Gardening.