After going 0 for 3 in the past couple of decades to even get spores to even germinate, we now have the amazing, dwarf rock garden fern, Aspidotis densea (dense lace fern) thriving in the crevice garden. Because of it’s native range from Canada south through central California, we started with two strikes against us,
While all of the pitcher plants in the genus, Sarracenia produce pitchers in spring, some also produce new sets of pitchers in fall. The star of the fall show, with the best autumn pitcher production is the white-topped pitcher, Sarracenia leucophylla, a native to bogs from Georgia west to Mississipppi. Below are a few plants
The Tall Pitchers of Fall Read More »
We’ve previously mentioned that we are re-starting or renowned One More Block Tours, that we paused in the mid-1990s, due to starting the nursery. Our initial idea was to provide unique botanical/horticultural travel opportunities to visit exceptional nurseries, gardens, and natural areas. This new version of the OMB tours, which will also serve as a
One More Block Tours returns…Let the Travel Begin Read More »
Although the title sounds like it, we’re not promoting a new Woody Allen flick. It seems that despite having 27 agaves in the garden flower this spring and summer, three more have taken leave of their proverbial senses, and started sending up flower spikes that won’t open until fall, including the top Agave x amourifolia
The Smell of Love and Death is in the Fall Air Read More »
We love our adult ivies…the well behaved adult shrub forms of the pesky vines. Based on our observations, so do the native pollinators, which flock to them like nothing else in our fall garden. Pictured below is our nine year-old clump of Hedera colchica ‘Green Spice’ flowering in early October. This is an adult form
Our Favorite Spice Girl – Green Spice Read More »
One of our favorite textural plants in the woodland garden is the amazing Alpinia japonica ‘Green Waves’. This ginger rarely flowers here, unless we have a particularly mild winter, but who cares when you have great foliage like this. The ruffled foliage of this form, from the late specialty nurseryman, Don Jacobs garden, is not
Riding the Green Waves Read More »
We’ve not had the greatest of luck growing many of the super showy fritilarias (bulbs), but we’ve fared far better with fritillarys. The common name for both the plant and insect, derive from the Latin word fritillus, which loosely translates to “checkerboard pattern”, in particular, the stunningly beautiful, Gulf Coast Fritillary, Dione vanillae, which showed up
A Checkered Past…from Fritillaria to Fritillarys Read More »
Here’s our latest bit of mangave related plant breeding craziness. In 2015, we (Zac Hill) used pollen from a Jon Lindstrom xPolifreda hybrid (Manfreda maculosa x Polianthes geminiflora) to pollinate a flowering Agave victoriae-reginae. To our surprise, we got a single viable seed, creating a tri-generic x Hansara (name unpublished), that we named H. ‘Queen
Recreating Frankenstein? Read More »
In 1994, when I first saw the tree yucca, Yucca filifera, growing in the mountains of Northern Mexico, it immediately went on my plant lust list. My first plants, acquired under the old name, Yucca australis, all met with a demise as untimely as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I thought our garden spots
Climbing to the Hairy Top Read More »
As of September 2025, we officially have a newly published hardy palm species, Sabal tamaulipensis, although it’s one that we’ve been growing since 1995, and offering for sale through Plant Delights since 2006. From the first time we laid eyes on it, we knew it constituted a new species, but our and other palm collectors
The Newest Species of Hardy Palm Read More »
