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Today we will ramble through a bit of Latin naming while we give some practical information about several wonderful plants. What is a hibiscus?

I can quickly think of three distinct but related shrubby plants with saucer shaped flowers. One is a tropical used as a houseplant. The other two have been focal points in my August garden.

In the name game, hibiscus is the plant genus. If I move up a step on the naming ladder I come to the Malvaceae family which adds plants with similar flowers like hollyhocks and malvas. Moving down the ladder we get more specific as we add the species name.

Many plants have been found in the wild or are selections of plants found in the wild. If an x appears in the Latin name it is hybrid created in a controlled breeding program. We get many new plants as random seedlings or mutations on existing plants.

The taller of the two plants in my garden is Hibiscus syriacus. Most of us will know it as Rose of Sharon. This is a relic from grandmother's garden that is experiencing a rebirth,

It is a stiff upright multi-stemmed shrub, which blooms from late July into September. It can also be a trained standard. That's when you keep only one stem to make a shrub look like a small tree. Watching both forms, I believe you get more flower power from the free growing form. Besides, it is a lot easier.

Colors include white, reddish pinks, purples and even a near blue. In the plant world, as you know, most blues look a bit purple. So does this one. Some have a dark eye in the center of the flower. Flowers can be single, double or somewhere in between.

According to the literature, late winter pruning will increase growth and flowering. My head high plants are only three years old and have not seen the pruners yet.

The other hibiscus in my garden is the die-back shrub with the near dinner plate sized flowers. With this one there is a large number of species and hybrids. Colors favor red, pink and white.

You can find varieties that will be waist high and others that will grow past your head. They do this quickly, as they are very late to emerge in the spring. I don't stake the tall ones but occasionally will pinch when they are a foot or two tall to encourage branching.

As I said, this one is a die-back shrub. I always leave the dead stems as a marker until the new growth appears. This year with the cool spring they were still emerging in early June. Yet by August 1 they were waist to head high and in bloom.

Several days ago I saw someone trying to buy the bluish Rose of Sharon. To him they looked right but he was troubled that they were called hibiscus. That's the reason for the Latin, as confusing as it may seem. Common names often are a path to even greater confusion.

Is it me or is it the calendar that is out of whack? As I struggle to convince myself that fall is just around the corner I'll share a laundry list of some 'do it now' projects.

My rototiller has scheduled another visit to my vegetable garden in the next day or so. Grandma said that turnips should be planted August 20. Over the years that has worked well for me although I'll often cheat a bit on the late side. Radishes and greens like lettuce and spinach will also work.

Sneaking in a few more cauliflower and broccoli plants usually bring a late reward. I also plan to hide several rows of pea seed. If it works, I will crow about it later. If it doesn't, I promise you will hear no more.

The authorities say that fall is a good time to divide existing or add new perennials. I agree. My definition says fall starts about August 20 if there is adequate moisture not to overwork the water hose. This year it is August 20. Last year I had to wait till September.

Conventional wisdom says do the spring bloomers in the fall and the fall bloomers in the spring. That works, but it's fine to do both in the fall. I like to be done by late September or early October, but often I'm not.

The advantage of fall transplanting is good root development. That happens because the soil is still warm and the air temperature that encourages top growth is dropping. In the fall root growth wins the race with top growth, which makes a strong plant.

One exception is most ornamental grasses. They like it hot and are best planted from mid May until now. If you are thinking about adding grasses, do it now since they will just sit there and look angrily at you if you plant them when it is cool. There are a couple of exceptions.

If you have an apple tree or two and you are plagued by upright new growth each year, I have a suggestion. Cut it out now. Better yet, flex your muscles, don a glove and pull it out. Either way you will get a lot less re-growth that occurs with winter pruning.

As I look at my lawn, I scratch my head. This has been a great year for weeds, fall grass and white clover. They say this is a lawn crying for a soil test and some lime and fertilizer. I hate that thought as this year has already been non-stop mowing.

There also are weed control chemicals out there. Safety, application method, environmental impact and timing are important. If you use them, question your supplier and read the labels. Done incorrectly, they work both where you want them and where you don't.

I'll quit now. If you find this laundry list of projects too short, tell me, and I will try again next week.

The next time you get in the car for a near home ride, play a little game. Count the number of homes that were built in your lifetime. It's pretty amazing, right?

Unless the house was built in the woods, one of the first acts the new owner takes is to plant a few trees. The number and size of the trees will vary with his budget, but that begins everyone's march into shade gardening.

There are two chief problems when one approaches shade gardening. The first is to determine the degree or amount of shade you will be working with. The other is moisture robbing surface roots.

Maples are perhaps the most widely planted yard tree and have probably created the worst surface roots. You can quickly add beeches and the elm family to the problem list. As my yard wanders further and further from my house I see problems with sycamores, ash and tulip poplars.

I see few problems with oaks, hickories, dogwoods and most evergreens. If you are at the new home part of the cycle you might want to think twice about the trees that come to your yard. Check out the ground under the trees growing in your neighborhood and/or visit a mature garden like Longwood.

If you are in a more mature spot you choices are more limited. It would be horticulturally acceptable to remove some of the worst offending surface roots, Do that by cutting them cleanly near the trunk and digging them out. That's a lot of work and probably not an option favored by many of us.

Covering them with extra dirt is not an option. Even a slight change will start instant decline and eventual death with most trees. In the rare instance where this doesn't happen, the tree will quickly fill the new soil with more problem roots.

When one considers the combined problems of shade and roots there are spots that are virtually impossible to find plants that will grow. In these cases I am about ready to resort to a light coat of mulch for weed control, aesthetics and to convince my mower that mowing over tree roots is a bad idea.

If you are mulching remember that this brings insects and other varments. These, with the added dampness that mulch brings, can damage tree trunks. Keep the mulch at least six inches away from the actual trunk.

All that said, let me add that if you are gardening in shade where you have a high canopy with lots of light, or an area where the shade shortens the exposure to direct sun, you have a wonderful place to play, sit and plant.

I close by recalling one of the last times I took dad to the doctor in Quarryville. I asked him to point out the houses that were here when he was a boy. He got to maybe ten. That's a lot of shade gardens developing and they are still building.

Is there a place in your landscape for the kids? Your own, your grandkids or even an inquisitive little neighbor child. Do they have a place to play? Do they have a place to dig? Do they have a place to hide?

My gardening adventure started with my grandmother and formed many of my earliest memories. It was the large clump of giant rudbeckia near the wall on the lower side of the porch. With a paring knife, sneaked from the kitchen, I hacked a path, my hands, and a small place to hide.

It also was helping her pull weeds, divide plants, start slips and collect seeds. Her habit of constantly sending any of the above home with me fueled my first garden.

One of my fondest memories of my daughter is the constant parade of bouquets that were picked for her mother and her grandmother. If there wasn't enough in the garden for her bouquet, she could find contributions in most any open field. This year, as she nears an advanced degree in plant breeding, one of her plants is in several nationally distributed seed catalogs.

Whoa! My purpose is not to dwell on two inveterate plant lovers but to get you to think about kids and your landscape.

Of course all small kids and many larger ones like to dig and see things grow, especially if it is theirs. Is there a spot for their garden? Of course there needs to be some grass to let them run.

Add a playhouse if you wish. Scale it to their size. Add a sandbox or add some water. Have you ever seen a kid that wasn't able to fall into even the smallest puddle?

Finally give them some privacy. A number of years ago while touring gardens west of Lancaster, we found a little trail leading away from the main garden toward a clump of evergreens.

We followed it until we found three or four small children holed up away from the commotion of all the visitors. They were almost indignant that we had invaded their domain. I remember similar effort, besides the rudbeckia forests, as a child to hide.

If you are fortunate to have existing trees or shrubs to do the job, use them. If you don't, you could do the same thing with tall perennials, ornamental grasses or a trellis of vines. Remember, the kids may grow faster than some of your shrub or tree selections.

We hear complaints that the kids never go outside. That they stay holed up in their rooms with their TV's, computers or playstations. Maybe that is the only space that is really theirs. If that space existed in the garden they might go outside and discover the wonders of nature to boot.

It was bound to happen and it did. Someone, who knows more about growing perennials than I do, challenged my watering theories.

This all started when I drew the assignment of watering her plants while she was on vacation. Immediately I asked for a list of plants in her collection that were high water users.

I thought I had done my duty, but just before she left she told me that perennials need a lot more water than you think they do to be really happy. My response was to ask if there were additions to the original 'need water' list. There were a few.

Then I asked if there were any plants that were infrequently or never watered? That, too, produced a rather impressive list. Now that I am a week into my assignment I have made slight modifications to each list.

The point is that plants have very different water needs regardless of the weather. The varying weather conditions just complicate the issue. The key to successful growing is knowing how to use water.

I fear that many of us water because the sun just came up, or the sun is about to set or maybe because we saw the neighbor do it or even to prove that we are affluent enough to own a water hose. If you aren't watering based on observed plant needs you are watering too much.

This reminds me of the old wag about the gentleman who was amazed at the invention of the thermos bottle. He knew that it kept hot things hot and cold things cold. He just couldn't figure out how it knew which was which.

You will move to a new level of success in your garden when you and your garden hose know which plants are which when it comes to water needs. Until then you are probably watering too much.

The above tale is about plants in containers which, as we all know, have radically different needs than plants in the garden. In my perennial garden I never water beyond establishment.

However, I am building a short list of perennials that I am sure would perform better if they got supplemental water when needed. Right now that list includes garden phlox and bee balm for mildew control, astilbe and the re-blooming daylilies.