(aka: Costus speciosus) Hellenia speciosa ‘Wizard of Oz’ is an amazingly winter hardy form of the typically warm tropical, southeast Asian native crepe ginger. This gem is a 2013 Ozzie Johnson collection from near Yan Ming, Vietnam at 3,900′ elevation. Emerging in mid-June (NC), the thick, fleshy green stalks, quickly rise to 6′ tall. The
We’re always excited when a new fern finds our garden to it’s liking, and such is the case with Cyrtomium tsinglingense ‘Li Ping’, which is now heading into it’s fifth year in the ground. This previously uncultivated species of holly fern is from a Mark Weathington collection in Shaanxi, China.
Sing-a-long Holly Fern Read More »
When we built our retirement home a few years ago, we surrounded the patio with pollinator plants, one of which was a mass of the native Eupatorium purpureum ‘Little Red’. For the last few weeks, we can sit in our screen porch and watch a steady parade of butterflies. This amazing perennial, which forms an
Little Red is Butterfly Bait Read More »
We’re enjoying the mid-summer show of grass-leaf Barbara’s buttons, Marshallia graminifolia ‘Georgetown’. We grew this from a Patrick McMillan/Zac Hill seed collection near Georgetown, SC. Marshallia graminifolia is a coastal plain endemic, found from NC to Georgia, where it forms a short basal rosette of narrow, linear foliage, that’s topped with 20″ tall flowers stalks,
It’s lycoris time at JLBG, as we’re just wrapping up the early part of the flowering season (July 15-August 10). Most of the early blooming surprise lilies are the spring-foliaged species and hybrids. Typically, there are only a few of the fall-foliaged selections that flower during this early period. Sadly, most gardeners have only grown
The Season of Surprises Read More »
One of our more interesting new century plants is Agave ovatifolia ‘Glowing Angel’. This exceptional plant originated here, as a sport from Agave ‘Awakening Angel’, but without the blue edge. In winter, the foliage turns blue, but in early spring, the plant glows, with the intensity of the color radiating out from the center, which
It’s almost time to say so long to our long-time Plant Records/Taxonomist, Zac Hill, who will be moving to the Charlotte, NC area in early fall, to take over a similar position with the Bartlett Tree Company Arboretum. Bartlett is a private arboretum/research facility that, under the direction of plantsman Adam Black, holds one of
With the advent of A-I, finding accurate horticultural information on-line has become even more challenging, so we thought we’d take time to explain which type of on-line sources you can trust and which you probably shouldn’t. Let’s begin by breaking down gardening websites into information sources levels. From most to least trustworthy, those include: Primary
It’s Online, so it must be Correct Read More »
Kit Kat and I were having a heart to heart conversation in my office last week. As hard as we’ve tried to encourage her to strike out on her own innovative life path, she’s opted to take the simpler, less stressful route of just being a copy cat.
Our recent Titan Arum flowering caused quite a stir in the area, resulting in 8,400 visitors to Juniper Level Botanic Garden. On the two other occasions we’ve had one flower, our attendance hadn’t exceeded 1,000 people, so having this many folks was quite unexpected. At times, the line to see, smell, and touch, exceeded 300
The Titan has Fallen Read More »
