Looking lovely in the garden this week is the amazing Southeastern US native, Amsonia tabernaemontana ‘Storm Cloud’. Amsonia, commonly known as blue star, are a group of mostly native, typically deer-resistant perennials, prized both because they make such good drought-tolerant plants and they bear one of the few true blue flowers in the perennial world.
Storm Clouds Brewing Read More »
Below is our clump of Yucca ‘Southern Twist’ in the garden this month. This is a plant we discovered in 2011, near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and have also found as far south as the Florida panhandle. The only problem is that this plant doesn’t technically exist, according to the botanical literature. It’s possible that it has
The Mystery Soapwort Read More »
We have long had a fascination for evergreen oaks, and one we absolutely love is the Asian, Lithocarpus hancei var. ternaticupula. I have never seen this in another botanical collection, although a few certainly must exist. We tried two seedlings from different Taiwanese collections, and the lowland collection quickly succumbed to our cold winters. The
Back in June 1998, I was botanizing in Southern Georgia, with Woodlander’s Bob McMartney, when I spied a spectacular patch of ornamental grass, growing alongside the road in remote Warren County. We turned around and dug a small division, before heading on. While I was excited at the prospect of a heat tolerant, blue-foliaged grass
A few years ago, I was fascinated to see a catalog listing for a new ornamental grass that I didn’t know, Calamagrostis ‘Cheju-Do’. This struck my eye because calamagrostis are great ornamental specimens, and in 1997, I had the opportunity to botanize Korea’s southern island, Cheju. We subsequently acquired a specimen, which prospered for us,
Hypericum lloydii has looked great in the garden for the last few years. This little-known, imperiled (G4 rank) Southeastern US native, has shown excellent potential as a garden plant. In the wild, it’s found in dry open woodlands and woodland edges in well-drained soils in a narrow band from Virginia south to Alabama. In the
Lloyds St. John’s Wort Read More »
It’s hard to miss the giant Hedychium flavum (no relation to the rapper, Flavor Flav) in the garden this month. I first met this gem of a ginger lily years ago, when I was botanizing in Northern Vietnam, near the town of Sapa, where the arching stems were easy to spot, hanging from the steep
A Flava-rite Flavor Read More »
Looking lovely in the garden now is the woodland perennial, Actaea pachypoda, commonly known as doll’s eyes. Most of the commercial material available in the trade comes from much colder climates, and will not survive our summers. It has a huge native range from Canada south to Louisiana, so it’s surprising that introductions of heat
Hey Doll, love those Eyes Read More »
We just love plants that flower in a true shade of blue, and there aren’t many, especially during the summer months. There are plenty of plants that flower horticulturally blue, which to those who aren’t color blind or prone to exaggeration, are actually purple. Ceratostigma willmottianum is one of those perennials we simply wouldn’t garden
We’ve long been fans of the tropical crepe ginger, Costus speciosus. We’ve trialed it several times, however, with no long term winter hardiness here in Zone 7b…until…a group of friends were botanizing in far Northern Vietnam, near the Chinese border, when plantsman Ozzie Johnson spotted it growing there at 3,900′ elevation. Returning home with a
Costumed in the Garden Read More »
