I'd baby the Satsuma in a pot unless the soil is great. I'll bet the rudebeckia will be OK if you're very gentle. They are fairly hardy. Anyone else??PJ

Be sure if you stake the tree you stake it where it can still sway in the wind some or the roots won't go any deeper. What type of soil do you have? Was the stasuma grown from seed or a cutting? I didn't know until last week that the cutting only form shallow roots but the ones grown from seed have the deeper root system. As far as the rudebeckia, they should be fine like pjtexgirl says. Good luck!

I was thinking of staking it on two sides...probably with pantyhose, as I don't have anything else that won't tear the bark up. We have lovely clay gumbo here. I don't know from whence the satsuma came, as I bought it less than two feet tall in a five gallon nursery pot. It's roots appear to be pretty shallow...I vaguely remember needing to separate/unwind the root ball a fair bit to plant it.

I went ahead and cut the plants in the flower garden down....hoping that will dry out some of the fungus problems and it certainly looks better than brown and falling over. Fortunately, it's usually pretty mild here so any new growth is not likely to get frozen. And even if there is a cold snap...four feet by four feet is easy to throw a sheet over.