Looking quite dazzling in mid-April is our specimen of the Chinese fringe tree, Chionanthus retusus ‘China Snow’. The incredible masses of white flowers perfume quite an area during the flowering period. This is a particularly heavy-flowering selection from the late nurseryman, Don Shadow. Mature size is 30′ tall x 30′ wide, with a winter hardiness
This week marked our annual flowering of the endangered African aroid, Pseudohydrosme gabunensis ‘Stained Glass’, which we first flowered in 2021. Kew Gardens recently posted that they just flowered it for the first time ever in the UK. This tropical African rain forest genus is comprised of only three species, all from the countries of
Is anyone other than us growing, the Japanese woodland perennial, Ainsliaea cordifolia? This odd member of the aster family has strikingly patterned foliage, but for us, has been painfully slow to grow. The plant below is all we have after 18 years of cultivation of a plant we purchased originally from Barry Yinger’s Asiatica Nursery.
Who Knows Ainsliaea Read More »
We’re preparing for another crazy year of century plant breeding, with fourteen agaves in spike so far. After flowering 34 clones over the last two years, we expected less this year, but now, that doesn’t appear to be the case. From the initial spike appearance to the first flowers opening is generally 6-7 weeks, so
Early April is peak time at JLBG for Ajuga flowering, commonly known as bugleweed. We think these amazing new cultivars are a great solution to reducing the need for mulch in sun to part sun landscaped areas. Some of the new colored leaf cultivars are even more spectacular when in flower…below are a few.
Trumpeting Bugleweed Read More »
Looking lovely in the garden this week is the amazing native (Pennsylvania south to Georgia) Fraser’s sedge, Carex fraseriana. This sedge is so odd, that it spent much of its life, relagated to it’s own, lonely genus, Cymophyllus. We failed with this countless times, before we planted one in between rocks, which seems to have
I’m just back from speaking to a couple of North American Rock Garden Society Chapters in Massachusetts, an area I hadn’t visited in over two decades. My journey began at the Berkshire Botanic Gardens in Stockbridge, a venue I last spoke at in 1999. Over 50 folks showed up on a cold, drizzly day, as
Hanging with a Mass of Rockers Read More »
On a 2019 botanical expedition to Montgomery County, NC, our staff (Zac and Jeremy) discovered this never before documented natural hybrid between Dentaria dissecta (Cardamine dissecta) and Dentaria laciniata (Cardamine contactenata). We’ve christened two clones from the population, Dentaria x lacinisecta ‘Whitened Teeth’ (top) and Dentaria ‘Angel Hair’ (below). Now, we just need to have
Whitened Teeth and other Dental Work Read More »
Flowering now is the amazing groundcover selection of the European daphne, Daphne cneorum ‘Pygmaea’. For years, we were told this wouldn’t grow in our climate, and if you treat them too well, they will not thrive. This is in flower now, growing in our dryland berm, composed of 50% Permatill gravel, 25% native sandy loam,
How Low can you Grow? Read More »
From an ex-situ conservation standpoint, we are a bit fanatical about trilliums. We grow many thousand trilliums from seed each year, and also travel around the country studying trilliums in the wild, which has given us an incredible opportunity to make some amazing selections. At JLBG, we currently grow over 1,600 different trillium selections, which
Trillium – Round 2 Read More »
