Half banana, I live in the Eastern part of USA. Here, the crape myrtles grow from Washington DC south and along the coast up to Delmarva peninsula. My M-I-L lives in New Jersey at the shore, and she was not successful with crape myrtles at all. There suppose to be a new varieties hardy to zone 6 (Washington-New York City), but I do not think they been proven considering we can see the winter temperature as lows as -20C in NJ. Crape Myrtles do well in hot humid summer, which is most of the eastern part of USA along the coast between Texas to Delaware. I never seen a crape myrtle in Europe. I have also chaste tree and this grow well. I can see them as well in the Czech republic around Prague and southern Moravia.
My story with rhodos: We had utility dig and they destroyed last year a row of rhodos along the house. I had replaced it with another one, but I think it did not get established and is suffering. I am lucky with traditional USA based rhodos like catawbiense which grew into huge size over these years. However, other imported plants had not established. I had rhodo Novaya Zemlja and it died, because it could not tolerate the summer heat. Mountain laurels are known to be difficult. I have one well established, but the plant next to it died this winter. I have not seen many people planting them because they are plants for a higher elevation and do not get well established along Eastern seaboard. I see a lot of mountain laurels up the Shenandoah, Blue Ridge mountains and West Virginia like Dolly Sod Wilderness.
