I have never been to the Missouri Botanical garden in spite of living in Springfield my whole life (minus those dry 18 months). The problem w OK I guess yes you can grow a spectacular garden if you can afford the water bills, and I guess hauling in decent soil-cause I sure didn't see any of either where I was at. We had a silver maple here 8 yrs ago when we bought our current house, and I talked husband into cutting it down, he didn't want to do it. But some idiot planted it literally 5 ft from the house. He's glad now we got rid of it. We cut about 25 trees here. Was a ton of work, but they were all so badly storm damaged, never pruned properly, or just trash trees. Several just planted in bad places, had an elm 10 ft from our septic tank, one of the first to go. We have since planted many other trees.
