We were recently bushhogging an overflow nursery parking area, which is a fallow field, that includes quite a few tree seedlings, primarily Liquidambar styraciflua. During the six-hour mowing exercise, I discovered three different variegated clones of our native sweet gum, each growing about 100 feet apart. Recent research has documented that mowing off woody plants […]
Our New Gums Make us Smile Read More »
As early July rolls around, our buffalo gourds in the garden are looking like, well, like buffalo gourds. Ibervillea lindheimeri is an odd North American native member of the squash family, occurring naturally from Oklahoma south into Northern Mexico. At ground level, it forms a rather nice caudex (swollen plant base), that’s highly prized by
If you want to create a colorful, fire-like spark in your woodland garden, without endangering your neighbors, there are few plants better than our 2021 introduction, Lychnis senno ‘Once in a Vermillion’. This Chinese woodland native catchfly, has proven both durable and reliable, starting to flower for us in July, and continuing through September. Below
A Cool Forest Fire Read More »
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,
Woodland Wonder Wild Ginger Read More »
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 »
