Don't get trimmed from your green.

Byline: Paul Rogers

COLUMN: Your gardening answers

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Today is a day to think green and to celebrate green in all of its forms, but exercise your "green-gene" wisely. But do not waste money on outrageous plant offers.

Several offers make an appearance every spring. The first is for a "super growing flowering shade tree (that) zooms another foot higher every time you water it!" Identified as Paulownia tomentosa, you might think that this miracle tree was a newly introduced product of the plant breeders' art.

Instead, you should know that this tree, the Empress Tree, was introduced into the U.S. from China in 1834. It indeed develops rapidly, and, when blooming in May, the pyramidal clusters of purple flowers are quite showy. However, the reason that you have not seen Paulownia growing in everyone's (or anyone's) front yard in Worcester County is because the tree is not...