It’s been almost five years, since I extolled the virtues of the amazing Juniperus chinensis ‘Kaizuka’. If you’re a card carrying member of the plant-butchering, meatballs-r-us crowd, this is not your plant. Sadly, because this introduction from Japan’s Yokohama Nursery, prior to 1920 is so widely used in industrial plantings, many keen plantspeople also dismiss […]
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We just snapped this image of our clump of Aucuba japonica var. borealis ‘Sea of Japan’. In parts of the county where typical Aucuba japonica isn’t winter hardy, this tetraploid subspecies may be worth a try. This subspecies hails from one of coldest regions of coastal Japan, in northern Honshu, where it’s subject to an
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Flowering for us, just after the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, are the Helleborus x lemperi group. These hybrids represent crosses between Helleborus niger, which only comes in white flowers, and the slightly later group of Helleborus x hybridus, which come in a range of colors. These sterile hybrids flower with, or slightly after the Christmas
Looking great in the winter woodland garden is our specimen of Cyclamen hederifolium ‘Fine Silver’. Most silver leaf seedlings still have markings of green, but that’s not the case on this gem. These come reasonably pure within a range, so let’s hope we’re able to gather seed this year. Dry soils during the summer dormant
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In 2015, one of our crazy plant explorer friends, mentioned that he was heading to Iran to botanize for for plants. The first thing that popped into my mind, was my long-standing quest to acquire some wild documented poet’s laurel, Danae racemosa. Surprisingly, he was able locate fruiting plants from the Mazandaran region, just north
I was admiring our specimen of Viburnum ‘Moonlit Lace’ the other evening, and wanted to upate our previous post about its mature size. It’s still being touted on-line as maturing at 3-4′ tall x wide, which simply isn’t the case. This 9 year old specimen is currently 7′ tall x 12′ wide. Based on the
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A little known conifer that’s one of our garden favorites, is Cupressus (Hesperocyparis) arizonica ‘Raywood’s Weeping’. We’re limited conifer-wise, compared to the Pacific Northwest, so we were thrilled to find such a superb weeping silver-blue foliaged, North American native, that thrives in our hot, humid climate. It can be staked as high as you’d like,
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Over the last decade, we’ve grown a large number of cast iron plants from seed, and due to the diversity of plants in our collection (228 unique taxa), the diversity of seedlings have also been quite astonishing. Below is the latest seedling of Aspidistra elatior, that we found worthy of the name, Aspidistra ‘Split Personality’.
No, we’re not going to discuss the sad state of UNC football, as enough people have jumped on that lame horse. Instead, we’re going to talk about an ornamental grass that we adore. A couple of years ago, we posted a summer blog about this amazing southeast US native grass, Andropogon glaucopsis. Our SC seed
We’ve grown shrubs in the genus, Cleyera for well over three decades, and still find them virtually underknown, underappreciated…and usually misnamed. 99% of the plants in the trade as Cleyera, are actually an allied genus, Ternstroemia. If that wasn’t confusing enough, Cleyera was long considered a Camellia relative, in the same family, Theaceae. Having grown
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