Looking rather spectacular and rather prickly is our native Yucca aloifolia ‘Variegata’. This stunning Southeast US coastal native is rarely offered by nurseries primarily due to the difficulty in taking cuttings. Reportedly, the common name “Spanish bayonets” came from early Spanish settlers in Florida, who planted these as a perimeter border to ward off intruders. […]
Colorful Spanish Bayonets Read More »
We’ve grown literally thousands of wild gingers, both North American and Asian natives. One of the finest plants in the entire collection is our 2000 Davidson County, NC, selection from a development site, that we named Asarum minus ‘Woodland Wonder’. Below is our 25 year old clump. As much as we hate to divide it,
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After an initial introduction in 2024 where demand outstripped supply, we should have more xMangave ‘Mayan Moon’ in our Fall 2026 catalog to be released in early August. This amazing but non-offsetting (without horticultural coercion) plant was discovered by plantsman Hans Hansen as a sport of his xMangave ‘Mayan Queen’. Zones: 9a to 11, guessing.
We were recently checking our nursery swamp pink seedlings of Sabatia foliosa and to our surprise we found that most of the offspring looked nothing like the parent. Unbeknownst to us, our garden plant from which we gathered seed had been sexually involved with a nearby Sabatia kennedeyana. The resulting crop of plants were perfectly
Philandering in the Swamp Read More »
Flowering now is a new eryngium for us, the South American Eryngium elegans. Our plant comes from a Mark Weathington collection in Uruguay. Despite only being in our trials for a year and a half, we are quite smitten. The amazing, 7′ tall branched flower spike towers above the basal rosette of foliage. We’ll need
Putting on a show this month is the poorly endowed rain lily, Habranthus brachyandrus. Native to Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia, this showy bulb starts its flowering season in mid-June (NC), and continues through September. Three days after each rain a new crop of flowers emerges. The specific epithet brachyandrus lets the world know that it
Embarrassed Rain Lily Read More »
One of our favorite new perennials of the last 15 years is Sanguisorba officinalis var. microcephala ‘Little Angel’, which is in full flower in the garden currently, as you can see in the photo below. This deciduous North American native groundcover should be in every garden, yet our sales for the last decade were quite
The Rejected Angel Read More »
Many folks who visit JLBG have asked about former staffer, Jeremy Schmidt, who departed almost three years ago for a stint at Alabama’s Bellingrath Gardens. In the 15 years Jeremy was here, he installed our 300′ long crevice garden, our 550′ rock lined stream, several other garden streams, our dryland welcome berm, and countless other
The Rock Man Returneth Read More »
It’s hard to resist humming the Village People’s 1979 disco tune, In the Navy, every year when the amazing Agapanthus ‘Navy Blue’ comes into full bloom. From our kitchen window, it’s certainly looking quite stunning in the summer garden. Although a single flower head isn’t as large as some other cultivars, the mere show power
Looking fabulous as we head into the heat of summer, is the grey-haired Brazilian sword fern – Pleopeltis lepidopteris ‘Morro dos Conventos’. We introduced this amazing fern in 2018 from a 2012 Yucca Do spore collection from its native range along the sea coasts in Southern Brazil. This evergreen sun lover naturally grows among rocks
A Brazilian Beauty Read More »
