Cool Combo
Here’s a recent garden vignette with Ajuga ‘Cordial Canary’, living happily with Alstroemeria ‘Princess Fabiana’.
Pipevines – A weirdo that you and your swallowtails can’t live without.
by Patrick McMillan The past couple of weeks the small, freakish flowers of one of the strangest of plants have begun to open in our gardens – pipevines. It’s difficult to believe that nature could summon up anything as strange as the flowers of pipevines. If you remember the “regular” aka actinomorphic and the “irregular”
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The Little Fuchsia that could
Four years ago, we embarked on an experiment to see how well Fuchsia ‘Sanihanf’ would grow in an unprotected hanging basket, left outdoors to the elements all year. The parent species, Fuchsia magellanica is fine in the ground to Zone 6, but has no tolerance of our summer heat. Fuchsia ‘Sanihanf’ was developed from Fuchsia
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The Crinum Show Continues
As we mentioned in a recent blog, we have a ridiculously large collection of Crinum lily cultivars and species. Despite this, we’re always making new crosses in our goal to improve the quality of plants available. Despite their being nearly 1,000 named crinums, there is still dramatic room for improvement. Below is one of our
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Super Rare Plant Auction
The Southeast Plant Symposium rare plant auction has begun. More plants will be added every other day until the symposium starts Friday. The auction ends mid-afternoon this Saturday. Many of these plants are simply unavailable anywhere else in the world. All auction proceeds are split between the JLBG Garden Endowment Fund at NC State and
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Fashion Statement
Most plants are a bit like bell-bottom jeans–one minute they’re the hottest fashion, and the next minute, you can’t give them away. In 2000, when Persicaria microcephala ‘Red Dragon’ hit the market, it was the hottest perennial in the country. You couldn’t visit a garden center or nursery that didn’t carry it. Fast forward 23
Check out this Kickin’ Bouteloua
The ornamental grass genus Bouteloua gained a huge rise in popularity with the introduction of David Salman’s 2010 introduction, Bouteloua gracilis ‘Blonde Ambition‘. While David’s selection hasn’t thrived in our heat and humidity, one of Patrick’s Texas collections has thrived. Bouteloua chondrosioides hails from West Texas south into Mexico, but surprisingly, doesn’t appear to be in horticultural
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Rockin’, Rollin, and Plantin’
For those who regularly attend our Open Nursery and Garden days, you have no doubt watched the evolution of our new dryland rock garden by our welcome tent. I thought it would be fun to look back at its short evolution. Below is Jeremy’s bed outline from late January 2021, when this new bed was
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Cremastra in your coffee?
Recently finished flowering in the garden is the fascinating Asian native orchid, Cremastra appendiculata. This widespread woodland species has a huge native range from the Assam region of India through China, to the Sakhalin Islands. In the garden, Cremastra is reasonably easy to grow, and quite similar although distantly related to two US native terrestrial
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Schocking Gold
One of favorite native trees is looking stunning in our parking lot. Acer rubrum ‘Schocking Gold’ was discovered by NC plantsman Richard Schock near his home in Boonville, NC. Richard shared his find with us in 1993, and we subsequently named the tree after him. Occasionally, when we’ve seen it offered, it’s listed incorrectly as