Our 4.5 year old clump of Rosmarinus ‘Arp’ has become ridiculously large, as rosemary does. When we moved to our new home, Anita requested one near the kitchen door, which was a no-brainer since I am in love with both her and her rosemary chicken. Rosmarius ‘Arp’ has been one of the most winter hardy
If you visit JLBG, it’s hard to miss that we like combinations of purple and gold. Here is a favorite summer combo, planted across from the crevice garden, where we use Rudbeckia speciosa as a foot warmer for Calycanthus ‘Burgundy Spice’…a fun combo using two North American natives.
Cyrtomium macrophyllum is looking particularly fabulous this year. This is a little-grown holly fern with a wide range from India to Southeastern China that can be found at elevations from 2,500-8,000′. The bold textured fronds arch outward to make a 2′ tall x 2′ wide clump that is semi-evergreen in most winters. It seems as
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Most gardeners are familiar with arums, but few know Engler’s arum…aka: Englerarum hypnosum, a genus first recognized in 2013. This horticultural oddity was kicked out of several better known aroid genera (Colocasia and Alocasia) due to its odd genetics (anastomosing laticifers and colocasioid venation). The lone species of Englerarum can be found in forests from
The Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars are munching away on any aristolochia (pipevine) in sight. This week, their favorite in the garden is the stunning Aristolochia fimbriata. Nature has created a wonderful balance where the catepillars each just enough to survive and grow, but not enough to damage the plant, which will quickly re-flush.
Most folks think of yuccas as only sharp plants, but one that’s sharp without being sharp is our Southeast US native Yucca x recurvifolia…a naturally occurring hybrid between Yucca aloifolia and Yucca flaccida. Here is the clone Yucca x recurvifolia ‘Variegata’ in the gardens this week. Hardiness is Zone 6b/7a and south.
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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Looking nice this week is this cool selection of the North American (Northern Mexico) native Manfreda undulata. All commercial forms of this are heavily spotted, but we really love this this amazingly rippled-leaf form that we picked up at Bob Brown’s wonderful UK nursery a few years ago on a UK plant roundup trip. We’ve
Looking good this week is Nierembergia ‘Starry Eyes’. We have special memories watching our friend Carl Schoenfeld collect cuttings of this on our 2002 botanizing trip to Argentina. While it’s only reliably winter hardy to Zone 8, it’s a flowering machine during the summer. Here it is growing in our new crevice planting near our
Over the last few years, we’ve been growing more and more aspidistra (cast iron plants) from seed in the garden. Here are a few of our more interesting seedlings. The first is from our search for a narrow-leaf selection of the common Aspidistra elatior, which has been christened A. ‘Thin Man’. The second is a
