Specialty Gardening: October in the Garden, 0 by dalfyre

dalfyre wrote:
yes we get frosts - some pretty good ones, normally just -5C is the hardest but we had a -7C frost a couple of years ago that kept ChCh plumbers busy for weeks with mending frozen & then burst pipes.
Not sure if you can grow gardenias outdoors in out 'winterless north'.
I never heard of them in a garden, only as a hot house exotic.
One consolation for having the cold winters is that we get camellia, rhododendron, azaleas & spring bulbs that won't cope with the heat of the tropics.
Oh and peonies... they need a good chilling in winter
This is my red one, pic doesn't do it justice, they are a much deeper red - and you can't see just how big the blooms are.