If you’re a member of the clipped hedge crowd, you can stop reading this blog now. Because we enjoy a more naturalistic look, we never shear any woody plants at JLBG. We find the diversity of shapes and forms of plants to be fascinating, and worthy of embracing, instead of making them conform to a
Take a Walk on the Wild Side Read More »
In 2015, one of our crazy plant explorer friends, mentioned that he was heading to Iran to botanize for for plants. The first thing that popped into my mind, was my long-standing quest to acquire some wild documented poet’s laurel, Danae racemosa. Surprisingly, he was able locate fruiting plants from the Mazandaran region, just north
I was admiring our specimen of Viburnum ‘Moonlit Lace’ the other evening, and wanted to upate our previous post about its mature size. It’s still being touted on-line as maturing at 3-4′ tall x wide, which simply isn’t the case. This 9 year old specimen is currently 7′ tall x 12′ wide. Based on the
Moonlit Lace on a Moonlit Night Read More »
A little known conifer that’s one of our garden favorites, is Cupressus (Hesperocyparis) arizonica ‘Raywood’s Weeping’. We’re limited conifer-wise, compared to the Pacific Northwest, so we were thrilled to find such a superb weeping silver-blue foliaged, North American native, that thrives in our hot, humid climate. It can be staked as high as you’d like,
Weeping makes us Jump for Joy Read More »
Over the last decade, we’ve grown a large number of cast iron plants from seed, and due to the diversity of plants in our collection (228 unique taxa), the diversity of seedlings have also been quite astonishing. Below is the latest seedling of Aspidistra elatior, that we found worthy of the name, Aspidistra ‘Split Personality’.
No, we’re not going to discuss the sad state of UNC football, as enough people have jumped on that lame horse. Instead, we’re going to talk about an ornamental grass that we adore. A couple of years ago, we posted a summer blog about this amazing southeast US native grass, Andropogon glaucopsis. Our SC seed
We’ve grown shrubs in the genus, Cleyera for well over three decades, and still find them virtually underknown, underappreciated…and usually misnamed. 99% of the plants in the trade as Cleyera, are actually an allied genus, Ternstroemia. If that wasn’t confusing enough, Cleyera was long considered a Camellia relative, in the same family, Theaceae. Having grown
Clearing up Cleyera Read More »
Two favorites in the Ranunculus family are flowering now in January. The first is the familiar Helleborus niger. Below is our clump of Helleborus niger ‘Sunny Border’ in early January. This Christmas rose prefers a more open shade to even a few hours of morning sun, and very well drained soil that never stays wet.
In 2015, we introduced an amazing selection of the short-lived, but showy, native Silene virginica, discovered by Alabama’s Colleen Keleher and shared by her husband, nurseryman, Maarten van der Giessen (photo below). Silene ‘Jackson Valentine’, was such a dramatic improvement over the typical species, that it was purchased and shared with gardeners worldwide. One of
The Little Native Perennial that Could Read More »
One of the amazing broad leaf evergreen shrubs we wrote about three years ago is the Chinese Euonymus myrianthus. We were excited then, and are even more so now. Our specimen has reached 8′ tall, on the way to 12′-15′. The glossy dark green leaves look great all year. We’re still waiting for our plant
Many-Flowered Euonymus Read More »
