Looking great now in the bog garden, alongside the pitcher plants is another little-known native (Canada south to Mississippi) perennial, Lophiola aurea. Lophiola is one of only five genera in the Nartheciaceae family. Hardiness is Zone 4a-9b.
Since we opened the Souto sun garden section of JLBG to the public, circa 2014, we’ve been dealing, rather poorly, with an unsightly water runoff capture pit on the east side of the garden. The 30′ x 30′ pit was first filled with weeds, and later converted to a bed for marginal aquatics like cannas
Bogged down, but still Rockin’ Read More »
We always get excited when the Osmunda regalis fronds begin to unfurl in the bog garden at JLBG. Here are some images from this week, showing the new fronds. The rosy emerging growth is the sterile part of the fern frond, while the green growth at the top is the fertile part, which will produce
This winter, we were mulling over options for our a bed along the walkway to our nursery and garden office. We had previously had a narrow raised bed, but this was backing up rain water on our sidewalk. The garden and research staff proposed that we remove the raised bed and install a bog garden/rain
Bogged Down in the Garden Read More »
We’ve grown the native loblolly bay, Gordonia lasianthus for several decades, but I’d never stumbled on one as large as the one we spotted last week while botanizing in coastal southeastern North Carolina. The specimen we ran across has a 26″ diameter and a height of 70′, which although huge, turned out to be slightly
I’d grown quite a few eryngiums…49 different ones, in fact, before Patrick shared Eryngium ravenelii with us in 2015. Who knew we were missing one of the best eryngiums in the entire genus! Today, Eryngium ravenelii holds several places of honor in our garden, where we can watch the myriad of pollinators who regularly stop
Reveling with Ravenel Read More »
We were saddened this past week to hear of the passing of our friend, Dr. Larry Mellichamp, age 73, after a three year battle with bile duct cancer. I first met Larry in the late 1970s, when he spoke to our Horticulture Club at NC State. Over the next 45 years, we interacted regularly, mostly
One of the little-known of the native orchids is flowering now at JLBG. Habenaria repens, aka: water spider orchid, is the most widespread (NC to Texas) of the five native habenaria species. This charmer has been at home in one of our bogs for several years and has proven quite easy to grow. Hardiness is
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Our clump of the native, Sabatia kennedyana just finished another amazing floral show. This fabulous, but easy-to-grow perennial has a truly odd native distribution on the coastal border of North and South Carolina, on the coastal border of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and in Nova Scotia! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an odd,
In case you missed this section of the garden during spring open house, this is where we created a small vignette that comprises both bog and desert conditions in the same space. The low central area was created for pitcher plants and other bog lovers, while the higher areas to each side, are home to
