To paraphrase the late Carl Sandburg, “The fog comes on big cat feet. It sits on the greenhouse on silent haunches and then moves on.” Sure enough, we arrived at work last week to discover that a bobcat had traversed the top of one of our greenhouses. Through the years, we’ve had several animals that
Working outside last weekend, I unknowingly uncovered this Southern ring-neck snake (Diadophis punctatus), who I’m sure was trying to stay warm. These cute snakes have one of the largest distributions of any North American native snake, ranging from Canada south to Florida. As many snakes as I’ve run across, I can’t specifically remember spotting one
Sneakily Ringing in the New Year Read More »
Snug as the proverbial bug in the rug, is our clump of Aloe aristata, nestled in the crevice garden, where it stays quite dry during the winter. On our 2005 expedition to South Africa, we found these growing at 7,800′ elevation, so the species has good winter hardiness when growing in the proper habitat. Aloe
Tucked away for winter Read More »
Doug snapped this photo of a mixed-up clump of a Gentiana angustifolia hybrid, flowering in the crevice garden in mid-January. We asked why was it blooming in mid-January? The lack of an intelligible answer was similar to what you’d get trying to interview former Patriot’s coach Bill Bellicheck. This alpine/sub-alpine native of the Alps isn’t
Don’t Chase away the Winter Blues Read More »
Most gardeners are so focused on the flowers of surprise lilies (Lycoris), they forget about the amazing foliage. There are two groups of surprise lilies: those which produce leaves in fall, and those which produce leaves in spring. The fall-leaf species and hybrids have foliage that emerges anywhere between September and November. With the hybrids,
Don’t forget the leaves Read More »
Looking great in mid-January in our crevice garden, is the shrubby Mediterranean native, Teucrium marum, known more widely as kitty crack. The incredibly fragrant foliage is enough to drive your cats wild…far beyond anything you’ve seen from its cousin, Nepeta catarica (cat nip), which is also in the Lamiaceae family. It you really want to
A Crack full of Kitty Crack Read More »
Founder’s Message Happy New Year! It is with great joy that we share our inaugural Juniper Level Botanic Garden Members Newsletter. We have been hoping to get our membership program started for several years, but it’s finally getting off the ground beginning January 1, 2024. Everyone joining this year will be forever known as JLBG
Juniper Level Botanic Garden Quarterly Newsletter – Winter 2024 Read More »
Last week, we were chatting on-line with one of our lycoris experts from China about the different forms of Lycoris aurea, when they mentioned the different foliage types that could be found in each region of China where the plant occurs. I should mention that the yellow-flowering Lycoris aurea has the widest native range of
One of the most interesting discoveries over the last few years, is the realization that our rohdeas are mating with other rohdea species in the garden. Below is our first documented hybrid between the commonly grown Rohdea japonica and the little-known Taiwan native, Rohdea chinensis var. watanabei. We use the name Rohdea x japensis for
It looks like we might get viable seed this year on our farfugiums in the garden. Most years, the winter temperatures drop too cold for the late fall flowering seed to develop to maturity. Since Farfugium japonicum isn’t problematic even if we were to get some viable seed to drop, we like to leave seed
