bold textures

Picea orientalis, Sabal 'DeFuniak'

Hot and Cold Detente

We love planting garden combinations that cause visitors to have a moment of cognitive dissonance. One of those moments in the garden currently is illustrated in the combination of Picea orientalis with Sabal ‘DeFuniak’. I remember a visitor once commenting that they didn’t like it that we had planted cactus with ferns, since they found

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Why not try Tridens?

In full flower now at JLBG is the longspike tridens, aka: Tridens stricta ‘Buffalo Feathers’. Athough native from NC west to Texas, the genetics of our clump hails from a Wade Roitsch (Yucca Do) collection in Lee County, Texas, and is superior ornamentally in both form and longevity. We have found this little-known ornamental grass

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Playing with Colors, Textures, and Form

Here’s an example from JLBG, of how plant colors, textures, and forms can be used to create a garden vignette. The foreground is Tradescantia pallida (purple), Berberis thunbergii ‘Sunjoy Gold Beret’, Colocasia ‘Coal Miner’, Pennisetum orientale ‘Tall Tails’, and Albizia julibrissin ‘Chocolate Fountain’. The frame is backed with Vitex agnus-castus ‘Sensational’.

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Big, Bold, and Bodacious

If you’ve got a spot for big, bold, and bodacious in your garden, it’s hard to think of a better choice than Verbesina olsenii. This giant North American (Northern Mexico) native frostweed would be great even if it didn’t flower, which it does in mid-October with giant yellow corymbs that smell like tootsie rolls.

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Guardians of the pet

Here’s a fun combination in the winter garden where we interplanted a clump of the North American native Agave lophantha with a gold-leaf form of the Japanese native Selaginella tamariscina. Both the textural and color combinations are quite eyecathing.  The lesson…create vignettes throughout the garden and don’t be afraid to experiment!

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