I fell in love with the Arizona/Mexico native ornamental grass, Muhlenbergia dumosa when the the late JC Raulston first brought it back from Yucca Do Nursery in 1992. This odd member of the genus muhlenbergia resembles a clumping bamboo unlike other members of the genus. For those non-connoisseurs of Latin, dumosa means “bushy”. JC touted
One of our favorite of the US native (Central Texas) desert ferns is Pellaea ovata. Here is our clump in the crevice garden looking quite nice this week. This is scheduled to return to the Plant Delights catalog in January. Hardiness should be at least Zone 7b and south.
Tis the season for prickly pear harvest. Many of our early ripening prickly pears are beginning to change from green to red, providing a lovely feature in the fall garden. Here is our clump of Opuntia pyrocarpa this week. We hope everyone’s prickly pear is growing well from our giant prickly pear pad giveaway at
Ripe pears…prickly pears Read More »
Try as we might, we have been epic failures trying to grow the showy southwest native Zauschneria (now epilobium) in our garden, due to the combination of high humidity and torrential summer rainfalls. No matter where we tried them in the rock garden, they quickly expired. That was in the years BC…before crevice. Here is
Holy Zauschneria, Batman! Read More »
JLBG is full of blazing stars this fall…some seen when looking down in the garden and others looking up in the night sky. Here are couple of recent images, starting with a Texas collection of the widespread native Liatris aspera that’s looking great in the garden. Looking up in the early dawn hours is also
Stachyurus chinensis ‘Golden Joy’ is looking fabulous in our garden. This new gold-leaf sport of Stachyurus ‘Joy Forever’, discovered by plantsman Ron Rabidou, has been a wonderfully bright spot in the woodland garden at JLBG
Looking superb this week is our great native fern, Thelypteris kunthii (southern shield fern) So what is a kunth? In fact, this fern gets its name from German taxonomist, Carl Sigismund Kunth (1788 – 1850). Kunth was one of the first people to categorize North American plants, mostly from the collections of German botanists, Humboldt and
Who put the Kunth in Kunthii? Read More »
We love the winter hardy spiderworts, and Tradescantia ‘Pale Puma’ is one of our favorites. This hybrid of two northern Mexican species, T. pallida x sillamontana forms a lovely compact deciduous groundcover. Here it is in the garden this week, colored nicely and awaiting the first frost, which will send it into dormancy. In colder
We were so thrilled when the Japanese began hybridizing fuchsias to tolerate hot, humid summers, that we did mental backflips. Over two decades later, these amazing plants still thrill us with both their tolerance of our harsh summers and winters. Here’s a photo of Fuchsia ‘Sanihanf’ in the garden today. Good siting (part sun and
Where Fuchsias fear to tread Read More »
Some new plants are flashes in the proverbial pan, while others become long term industry standards. Here is our patch of Solidago rugosa ‘Fireworks’ in the garden this morning. This 1993 introduction from the NC Botanical Garden and Niche Garden has still not been topped 28 years later…one of the most stunning and best performing
Fireworks in September Read More »
