Never grown Red Pixie, but meyeri Palibin is a really good scented dwarf Lilac with good autumn colour too.

One of my clients has both of these in her garden, and I'd award 10/10 to the palibin, but nothing at all to the two Red Pixie - I don't like the colour, doesn't seem to be a fragrance, and it produces a lot of leaf compared to flowers. Both examples of Red Pixie have 'normal' lilac growth coming off the rootstock too, which doesn't seem to be an issue with palibin.

+1 for S. palibin. Had one of these for years, gorgeous, sweetly scented flowers in spring and only 4 foot tall.

Thank you very much. I'd been favouring Red Pixie from the write ups on line but will think again now!

Palibin is on order from Jacksons Nurseries (good value and cheaper than many) Hope it flowers next year!

Yea I liked Jacksons and have used them a lot, but earlier this year, they sent me the wrong Berberis - I ordered B. atropurpureum nana and they sent B. atropupureum. Lucky I'm a gardener, a novice would not have known the difference, but when I spoke to them, and after sending photos of the shrubs I'd got, they made me pack them up and send back to them BEFORE they would send out the correct shrubs. I was very, very annoyed, because it meant I couldn't complete a planting job on time, had a right ding dong about it. Given I was a long standing, professional customer, I was pretty cross... So yea, they're fine to use as a supplier so long as they don't send you the wrong plants...

They do a fantastic Heuchera called Midnight Rose, it's purple with pink splashes on the leaves, I've never found it anywhere else...

No wonder you were cross. Perhaps they'd had previous experience of someone complaining about a wrong delivery and never returning the plant wrongly sent?

I wish I'd known about that nursery when we lived near Stoke though - no internet in those days... It will be interesting to see how the quality compares with Crocus and Burncoose who seem very expensive to me. Its very encouraging that you have been a regular customer.

I understand why they want the plants returned first - your average punter may not pack them properly, or return them uncared for and half dead, but I'm not the average punter, and they know that. Well, anyway, all sorted now - I should warn you that sometimes certain plants are in a bit of a state when they arrive, they need potting up or planting out a bit sharpish, but I've never had anything from them that didn't grow, whatever it looked like on arrival.

Well its in the ground now and fingers crossed!