Delphenium and oriental poppies are all I can add off the top of my head. Another thing to keep in mind is that with our longer growing season, well tended perennial gardens really extend the length of bloom. The nursery I work at by necessity cuts back hard after blooming and I've seen many different kinds of plants have over three to four full flushes of bloom in one season. We have rudbeckia as well as salvia in full bloom in our back field and I have phlox in my garden that have bloomed off and on all summer because I shear them back after blooming. Adele

I can't add to your list but I would point out that while they may not be able to grow certain things several plants that would take full sun further north will need some shade here. And I keep running into plants that like winter sun and appreciate summer shade such as hellebores. Dirtrx

rhubarb :(

i'm near raleigh, and i grow lily of the valley just fine, but have to sadly second root's rhubarb comment. daffs do fine for me, too- and tulips so long as you treat them as annuals. sweet peas and nasties both like the cool weather so the trick for them is getting them in when & where they are protected but can get sun. i find that nasties love a cool greenhouse all winter, and that sweet peas started in fall and left on the ground in winter do just great come spring. there's a couple threads about it actually. and one about lilacs. cherries. i hate that sweet cherries do lousy here. you can grow some of the tart kinds, though.

Abies balsamea, the Balsam Fir, used by many New Englanders as a Christmas Tree, is one I will definitely miss. The fragrance of the needles is amazing.
Sandi

Look for the species types of tulips. They do much better than the hybrids.

transplanted in 07- you may miss the balsam fir, but wait til you see & smell a frazier fir. they are wonderful. welcome.

species tulips do great here and multiply well. they do tend to be a lot smaller and more crocus like, but i really like them. matter of fact, there's a lot of really interesting small bulbs that get mostly ignored.

Supposedly there are delphiniums that you CAN grow here in the South. I heard about these over on the rose board and ordered a flat from Green Mountain Transplants that I planted yesterday. They are called New Millenium Delphiniums and were developed down in New Zealand. When I ordered them the woman who answered the phone told me that she had just shipped a flat to Georgia. Several people on the rose board have grown them in the South and they did fine thru all the heat and humidity.

Here is a link to more info about them. From what I've heard Green Mountain is now out of them but they should be available in the Spring from them or a place called Graceful Gardens.

Carole

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.waltersgardens.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=plants.plantDetail&plant_id=191

likesivy: One of the things I assumed when I moved here was that if a plant was listed, say, as zones 4-8, I would have no trouble growing it in zone 7. Seeing some of the responses in this thread makes me think twice about that assumption.
Perhaps this should be addressed in your handout.

Coming from Maine, I always had to worry about plants being too cold through the winter; do I now have to worry about it being to hot?

tamelask: thanks for the welcome and I look forward to being introduced to a Frazier Fir.

transplant, you're more than welcome! yes, you do typically need to worry about the heat in summer just as much or more than the winter cold. guess it depends on whether you're wanting to grow tropical things or very cold hardy. some things will grow, like typical lilacs for ex., but it isn't cold enough long enough for them to get good bud set. there are some cultivars & species that will grow here, though, and of course the closer you are to the mtns, the better the odds for the cold loving stuff.

gotta check out the link for the delps. triangle john has grown them here successfully, and i've seen a few other manage it but it's tricky. that's great if there are cultivars that make it easier. larkspurs are a decent substitute, though.

:::Coming from Maine, I always had to worry about plants being too cold through the winter; do I now have to worry about it being to hot? ::::

Most definitely! Plant the wrong thing and you'll just watch it melt. For example I fell in love with Ostrich Ferns on a trip to Vermont and rushed to plant them once I arrived home. Even though I kept them well watered and in the shade they melted before my eyes. Since then I have found that I can grow Autumn Ferns which have given me almost the same look. Columbine also doesn't do well in my yard, Jacob's Ladder melted as did my wild ginger. On the flip side lantana and plumbago are perennial in my yard.

Carole

Transplant, like Tam said with the heat and not much cold lilacs are tough to grow down here, so you have to rethink how to grow them. You can do a search on this forum for 'lilac' (or any other plant you're curious about) and it's prolly been discussed. I know lilacs have been. I use to swear that no matter how far south I moved I'd always have lilacs even if I had to dry ice them in the winter, lol. Some think of crepe myrtles as a substitute for them, but I love my lilacs so I fuss with them each year. You can find specific cultivars that do great down here, like Miss Kim.

Placement here in the south can make a difference in whether or not certain plants can make it. Also certain cultivars of plants have been bred to the humidity and other conditions down here so that's something to look for. We get late frost after some fruiting/flowering trees have started blooming so you have to look at which trees have been bred to handle that by flowering a little later than the norm. I know there's a website at NC State University that has a list of which fruit tree cultivars do best for our location.

There are a lot of folks down here that love zone pushing too, which means growing things that aren't supposed to grow here with our cold wet winters. Check out plantdelights.com for some ideas on that. It'll take you into a whole new adventure in plants. :)

I have had a bit of success growing delphiniums outside Raleigh. But they aren't perennial for me. I grow them as a winter annual, they bloom in late spring/early summer. If I can get them started by Thanksgiving they will be head high and glorius by mid June. There is only one garden center here that carries them as seedlings and they only get them in March. March planted seedlings only get about 3 feet tall. No matter what the cel-pak tag says they always bloom a soft blue. When I get to travel to Charleston SC in the fall (this is rare) there are a number of garden centers there that carry plenty of color choices. Those have always been my best performers.

The new Millenium Series Delphiniums are magnificent in bloom but no one around here carries them. The seed's cost around one dollar per seed and delphinium seed is notoriously difficult to germinate.

One big change you will notice down here is that you can truly garden all year long. There are a number of winter blooming plants that can be clustered into a "garden room" so that on warm winter days you can sit outside and pretend its spring. Check out camelias, edgeworthia, daphne, winter honeysuckle, winter hazel, witch hazel, osmanthus for bushes and hellebores, pulmonaria, hepatica, pansies/violas, snapdragons, bellis, calendula, matthiola for annuals. Winter is one my favorite times to garden (fewer bugs and cooler temps).

As a recent transplant from Canada, I have learned that it is not that plants 'will not' grow, but that they behave differently or have different needs in order to thrive in this climate. A lot of plants that I grew as annuals in Toronto are perennial here. The reverse is also true. There are also thousands of plants that I never heard of before, not to mention all those lovely Azaleas and Gardenias that come from the florest at Christmas ACTALLY GROW OUTSIDE... IN THE GROUND! shocking... ha ha! I drive my southern spouse mad I am sure, making him stop everytime I spot an interesting leaf or flower growing in someone's yard.

Rather than focus on what will not grow, tell people about all of the wonderful plants that DO grow and thrive here. This is information which is extremely hard to aquire when you are new to an area and unfamiliar with the local flora. (Excuse me Mr. Nurseryman, I have seen a lot of pretty green shrubs with small white flowers can you tell me what it is?)

Information on average temperatures (yes I know this is unreliable) average percipitation levels (also unreliable) but still valuable to someone new. A list of nurseries, with knowledgeable staff would also be invaluable to people new to the region. Also lists of agricultural societies/ governemt offices / garden and plant specific clubs and organizations.

This is the sort of info I would have killed for last fall.

There are the plants that don't do as well here for reasons of heat/humidity, or the clay soil. Sedums (Autumn Joy and friends) tend to flop outward in many gardens here, whether because the long growing season gets them too tall, I don't know. Most of the coreopsis struggle in clay - good drainage is essential. Lavenders, thymes, rosemaries (in fact, many of the herbs) are the same, they need very good drainage, and maybe a little PM shade in the south. Of course, if the transplant is gardening in sand, then the last caveats don't apply.

Peonies aren't as happy (large and floriferous, but maybe they just need to grow bigger and older) here as I remember them being in VT as a child, but they do grow and flower. While Hendersonville, NC, 20 mi. west and north of me, and a LOT higher up in the mountains, is a major apple growing region - most of the apple trees I have planted have died on me. I have trouble growing strawberries, although there are a number of U-pick places nearby, so it can be done. The same for raspberries.