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If you can’t visit the garden every day of the year, we’ll virtually bring the garden to you with our daily blog, where we feature plants, plant trivia, or other JLBG-related happenings of interest.

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Lycoris radiata pumila ‘Fire Engine’

Lighting up the garden now is the August-flowering form of red surprise lily, Lycoris radiata var. pumila ‘Fire Engine’.  The flower stalks emerge overnight, and voila, here they are.  The foliage emerges in September and grows all winter.  I hope  you’ll check out these and the rest of our incredible lycoris offerings.

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Garden Photography – Photo Capture and Processing Workshop

Anita and I are always looking for ways to improve our photography skills since capturing the essence of a garden in a photograph can be a challenge with all the variables that mix to create a satisfying image. Practice is one of the keys to improvement and so is learning techniques from garden photography professionals. We

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Rain Lilies flowering up a storm

The rain lilies are quite incredible in the garden now as summer rains have them blooming almost constantly.  Here are two images taken this week…top is Zephyranthes ‘Batik’, and the bottom is Zephyranthes ‘Rose Perfection’.  Rain lilies can tolerate bone dry conditions for months, then the flowers explode 3 days after a rain shower.  Flowering

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Someone hurry and finish the ark

After another deluge of rain last night, we’re now sitting at 7″ of rain for the last week, which leaves us nearly 10″ above our yearly norm…progress on the ark isn’t happening nearly fast enough.  On the positive side, I’d taken lots of cool mushroom photos this summer including this un-named specimen above that struck

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Ferocactus wislizeni – genetics matter

I had read countless expert accounts, both on-line and in print, that Ferocactus wislizeni wouldn’t grow outdoors in our cold wet winter NC climate. Indeed, I had failed with plants from commercial sources, so in 2005, I went hiking into the Arizona mountains (Pima County), where I found seed on a plant at 3700′ elevation. 

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Agapanthus – blue flowers for the summer garden

Here are our top two performing agapanthus in full flower now…top is Agapanthus ‘Stevies’ Wonder‘ and the bottom is Agapanthus ‘Ellamae’.  We’ve trialed lots of agapanthus, and these are absolutely the best we’ve grown, both with 3′ tall flower stalks that have been flowering for several weeks and are still growing strong.

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