Our 2008 introduction of a selection of our native Yucca x gloriosa ‘Lone Star’ has been absolutely splendid in the garden as the fall season begins. Yucca x gloriosa is a natural hybrid of Yucca aloifolia and Yucca filamentosa. We absolutely love that these flower spikes appear at a time when most other plants are
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We’ve had Salvia ‘Rockin’ Deep Purple’ on trial since 2018, and it’s now headed for our January Plant Delights catalog. Although we love the Argentinian Salvia guaranitica, it spreads far too fast to be useful in many of our garden beds. We have been trialing a number of hybrids with Salvia guaranitica and an array
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Looking good in the garden now is Callicarpa americana ‘Welch’s Pink’, discovered by former PDN’er Matt Welch in East Texas. This is pink fruited form of our native American beautyberry, Callicarpa americana. The fruit are an important fall food source for many species of birds.
We always look forward to elephant ear evaluation day at JLBG, which was recently completed. Each year, Colocasia breeder, Dr. John Cho flies in from Hawaii to study and select from our field trials of his new hybrids. This year we were joined by Robert Bett, owner of the California-based plant marketing firm, PlantHaven, who
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We’re always on the search for new bananas that will be winter hardy without protection in our Zone 7b winters, and two that have looked great so far are the South Asian native Musa balbisiana (Northeast India to South China) and the Northeast Indian native Musa nagensium var. hongii. If these continue to thrive, we
Re-appropriating a line from the late Buck Owens, it’s crinum time again. Crinum lilies begin their flowering season in our climate around April 1 (frost permitting). Some bloom for a short number of weeks, while other rebloom for months. Depending on the genetics, some crinum hybrids start flowering in spring, some in summer, and others
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Gardeners in Zone 7b wouldn’t typically think of Angola (tropical West Central Africa) as a place to search for hardy perennials, but we’ve been thrilled with the performance of two natives of the region, Crinum fimbriatulum and Crinum jagus. The reason we kill so many plants is we try things that people with better sense
We’ve been playing around with yucca breeding for almost a decade, and now have hybrids that include from 3-5 different species. Here’s a shot of one of our evaluation beds when it was in full flower recently. Flower spike height ranged from 3′ to 10′. There should be some wild and crazy introductions once our
One of the most amazing summer perennials we grow is the native Berlandiera pumila ‘Chocoholic’. It is unfathomable to us, why this isn’t grown in every full sun garden where it’s winter hardy. The flowers, which smell like milk chocolate, top the 3′ tall clump nonstop from May until October. In the wild, Berlandiera pumila
This is the time of year when the tiger swallowtails feast on our many patches of the amazing native Stokes aster. Our favorite clone is the upright growing Stokesia laevis ‘Peachie’s Pick’. Moist soils are best, but stokesia tolerates some dry conditions on a short term basis as long as it has 2-6 hours of
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