Just a quick reply to your bog query. I live about 40 minutes from
Niagara Falls, in Ontario Canada. I've had some form of outdoor bogs for
about 10 years or so. We live in USDA climate zone 6 with winter
minimums of about -25C (you can check a USDA zone map for accurate winter
mins). Anyways. I've grown S. purpurea purpurea, S. purpurea venosa, S.
flava, S. rubra rubra, S. minor outdoors for years. The most successful
has been flava. Infact I've found natural hybrids between my northern
purps and Georgia flavas in my bogs. I've made my bogs out of 30 cm deep
kiddie pools. I fill it two thirds to the rim with peat. I then remove peat
from the centre, and hill it up around the perimeter of the pool to form a
depression in the centre. This I fill with live sphagnum. In that
depression I grow plants can expect to find in sphagnum bogs, my native
purpurea, drosera, native orchids, cranberries etc. Because this area is
drepressed, you can keep a very high water level, just like in the bog
habitat. Around the perimeter, I mix in in quartz silica sand to make a
1:1 mix of peat sand that goes down about 10cm or so into the peat. In
these, drier, higher areas I plant my flavas, rubras and so on. I've
never worried about covering it up, I'm sure if you did, you could
probably grow all Sarrs outside.
How mild are your winters?
I know a gent in washington DC who grows all his Sarrs outdoors year
round. Leuco, wherryies, gulfensis, oreophila, the works! He grows them
in beds formed from railway tie type wood. He fills them with local
coastal plain soil! I also know a gent on this list, in NJ, who grows his
Sarrs outdoors as well.
Good Luck
Carl