On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 10:47:17 -0400, Peter wrote:

Thanks for the info and links....

Your're correct about the temperature.... instead of -20 it was
-10 BELOW zero actual temperature including wind chill factor.
(Columbia is about 20 miles north of D.C.)

That was this past January / February 2003.... I remember getting
a lot of calls warning me about the freeze and spending a few hours
freezing my buns off trying to cover plants that had not been mulched
for the winter. This included a dozen or so newly planted protected
carmellia's hardy to 20 degrees. Darned that night was cold.

Matter of fact, the next few days were also frigid.
The carmellia's didn't survive, pulled them up, put them in
storage and some are beginning to get leaves again.

I did get a chance to look at some magnolia's.... for some strange
reason I thought they were canopied tree's....(wonder where that idea
came from).

Still open to some suggestions about small canopied evergreen tree's.
The plan for the center circle includes two park benchs that we'd
like to shade...
(all we need is a concrete checkers board to complete the image !!)

Thanks again for the help...already found a few magnolia's for the
backyard !!!

You can't imagine how much research I've been doing on
DC/Columbia/Baltimore weather. And even so, failed to read your
inclusion of "wind chill." I *did* find that apparently the all-time
record low *somewhere* in MD was -32 in like 1913 -- NOAA stats aren't
exactly in a neat, comprehensive database.

Sorry about the camellias. My giant bush (N. side of house) suffered
considerably in 2 consecutive hard winters (SE VA -- south of you)
some years ago, but came back and is once more threatening to shade
2nd story windows. Prune, prune, prune.

I'm not good with suggestions for trees. Magnolias seem pretty
fast-growing to me, but then time passes more and more quickly these
days. If you want to provide shade for your benches, it may be a good
choice. My Neighborhood Association has just planted 'decorative'
benches at Bayside overlooks -- no trees. There are about 20 minutes
each spring and fall when such an open location is humanly bearable,
but they *are* awfully pretty. :-)