asparagus

Asparagus horridus

Asparagus is Horrid

Thriving through our summer of heat is the fascinating Asparagus horridus. If you can’t tell from the photo, the foliage of this asparagus fern is actually masses of needle-sharp spines, from hence the specific epithet arises. This species is little-known in ornamental gardening circles, although foragers actually harvest the young foliage for food before the

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Agave funkiana 'Grand Funk'

Thorny and Horny

Can you imagine living your entire life, looking forward to only one sexual encounter, which will only happen just before death? Such is the life of an agave (century plant). In botanical terms, this is known as being monocarpic. Growing monocarpic plants is the ultimate mixed emotional undertaking. It’s exciting to see them finally flower

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False Red Agave

Looking great in the garden now is the false red agave, Beschorneria. Beschorneria is a small, little-known genus of only 8 species of plants in the Asparagaceae family–first cousin to the better known genus, Agave. Beschornerias are native from Northern Mexico, south to Honduras. Through the years, we’ve grown 7 of the 8 species, having

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So Long Sotols…In the Spirit of Plant Extinction

We’ve long been enamored with the Southwest native genus of slow-growing woody lilies belonging to the genus, Dasylirion. Since the early 1990s, we’ve been growing these, trialing as many species as we could obtain to see how well they adapted to our climate here in the colder, wetter Southeast. So, far, we have grown 16

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The Little Asparagus that Could

In 2006, NC plantsman, and our long time customer, Graham Ray of Greensboro, emailed to see if we were interested in a dwarf Asaparagus densiflorus (Sprengeri) fern that he grew in his rock garden, and had been winter hardy for several years in his Zone 7a garden. We had already worked with several asparagus species

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Arrange your Asparagus

Asparagus virgatus is undoubtedly one of our favorite textural perennials. How many evergreens do you know that thrive in shade with such an amazing texture, and can be cut for flower arrangements. If you’ve ever worked with cut flowers, you’ll recognize this as “filler” that you purchase with your flowers to add 3-D texture to

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Can you Spare an Asparagus?

We often talk about the amazing group of hardy asparagus ferns, so here we go again with a few that are looking particularly great now. The first image is our dwarf selection of Asparagus cochinchinensis ‘So Fine’. This is our new dwarf selection from our original collection from Korea’s Mt. Chuwang. Hardiness is Zone 4b-8b,

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Asparagus kissin’ cousin

Ok…raise your hand if you’ve grown Aphyllanthes monspeliensis? This odd, monotypic (only member of the genus) is actually a member of the Asparagus family. Hailing from France south into Northern Africa, Aphyllanthes can be found growing in hot, dry, sandy soils, where it produces an amazing spring show of blue flowers on a 1′ tall

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