Today is the last day of our Winter Open Nursery & Garden Days, 9am-5pm. Explore the beauty of the winter garden, shop the sales greenhouses, and join us for our Gardening Unplugged garden chats: 10 am – Sowing for Spring (Aaron Selby)2 pm – Top Evergreens for Winter (Doug Ruhren) It was delightful to look
Tied up in Pine Knots Read More »
Flowering this week in the garden is one of our more unusual hardy native aroids, Symplocarpus foetidus, aka: skunk cabbage. Although the floral aroma is barely detectable by humans, it does work well enough to draw in flies for pollination. Since skunk cabbage evolved to flower in the winter, often under snow, it learned to
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Flowering today in our specialty cold frame, where plants live before they are planted in the garden, is Camellia ‘Miss Sally’. This insanely huge flowered Camellia reticulata hybrid has blooms that measure a ridiculous 7″ across. This 2004 introduction was selected by Norfolk, Virginia’s Doug Simon, and shared with us by camellia guru, Mike Chelednik.
The well-endowed Miss Sally Read More »
If you attended the first weekend of our Winter Open Nursery and Garden, you got a chance to see many garden plants still covered with a layer of white, despite the pleasant air temperatures. For our upcoming second weekend, Feb 28, March 1,2, 2025, all of the snow has melted, and the hellebores continue to
Winter Open Nursery and Garden Read More »
Flowering here in mid-to-late February is the demure Coptis omeiensis. This dwarf, evergreen woodland perennial, with fern-like foliage, is from the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Henan, and is in full blazing glory. In the wild, it grows in rock cracks at elevation of 3,000′ to 6,000′ feet, but it’s been quite happy in the
Someone call a Cop-tis Read More »
Flowering in late February in the rock garden is the tiny bulb, Ornithogalum chionophyllum. This genus of onion relative has both some garden treasures and horrific weeds. This gem is a narrow endemic to the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus between 2,000′ and 6,000′ elevation. If the Troodos Mountain don’t sound familiar, perhaps you’ve heard of
I’ve recently returned from a speaking tour in the Pacific Northwest, that included talks at the Bellevue Botanical Garden and the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival, both in the Seattle area. This is my second opportunity to speak at the show, which I’d rate as one of the top in the county. I was also
One of the most fascinatingly demure lenten roses is the Bear’s claw, Helleborus foetidus, which is flowering now in the garden. This Western European native is one of the species with an upright stalk, compared to most species which have a horizontal, subterranean stem. The pendent clusters of light green flowers are held atop 18″
Our 25 year old Magnolia platypetala has been spectacular over the last few weeks, until our recent lows in the teens. Not to worry, as the unopened flower buds should be fine. The fuzzy brown buds, which are beautiful in their own right, open to large, fragrant white flowers. Taxonomically, it’s often listed as a
Flowering now in the garden is the Japanese wild ginger, Asarum fudsinoi. The glossy foliage on this 15″ wide clumper makes it one of the largest of the Japanese native Asarum species. Because of its tropical roots from the Southern Ryukyu Island, Amami-Oshimi (just south of Okinawa), it’s used to flowering quite early in the
Addition by Subduction Read More »
