Reineckea carnea is a plant in need to better PR firm. Despite offering this several times, sales are always miserable, while its cousins, liriope and ophiopogon are readily accepted into both home and public gardens. I think reineckeas are rather amazing evergreens, looking great as you can see below, as we move toward mid-January. Not
Searching for a better PR Agent Read More »
Looking good in its full fruit mode in mid January is the holly, Ilex ‘Emily Brunner’. This hybrid of Ilex cornuta and Ilex latifolia has proven to be one of the best specimen hollies we grow. A mature specimen is 20′ tall x 20′ wide, so if you’re planting this, give it enough space. Years
Being Fruity isn’t always a Bad Thing Read More »
In fall, when everyone is rushing to bring their fern baskets indoors when the weather forecast calls for frost, we can be focusing on other garden chores, because our fern baskets remain outside during the winter. That’s because, instead of selecting tropical ferns, we use epiphytic (that naturally grow on trees) ferns of the genus,
Winter Fern Baskets Read More »
This is the time of year that we’re harvesting seed from our windmill palms, Trachycarpus fortunei. Unlike our native Sabal palms, which have both male and female flowers on each plant, Trachycarpus are usually either male or female. Consequently, if you’d like to have a seed crop, it’s best to plant these in groups of
Fortunate to get Seed Read More »
We had a number of hybrid Cycas (sago palms) to flower this year, but almost all were females. Unfortunately, we had only one male plant to flower, and it opened long after the females were receptive. Despite this, one of our females is still holding on to the unfertilized ovules, which result in these seasonally
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
Hot and Cold Detente Read More »
Looking great in the garden, as we turn the page on a new year is the Japanese bay tree. I first met Machilus thunbergii (Lauraceae) thanks to my horticultural mentor, the late J.C. Raulston, who extolled the virtues of this evergreen tree, native to Taiwan, Southern China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. J.C. had been frustrated,
We love our Mediterranean blue fan palms! While there are several blue foliaged palms for gardeners in tropical climates, Chamaerops (Kam her hops) humilis var. argentea is the only one we’ve found reliable in our Zone 7b/8a garden. Mediterranean blue fan palm hails from high elevations in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, where it eventually
Hard to top a Chamaerops Read More »
I was just admiring one of our clumps of the amazing Yucca linearifolia in the garden…truly one of the stars of the genus. This North American native, named as recently as 1995, can be found naturally around the Nuevo Leon region in Northern Mexico. The plant below is now 18 years old and 5′ tall.
While most gardeners are quite familiar with boxwoods of the genus, Buxus, far less are familiar with their close cousins, sweet box of the genus Sarcococca. Sarcococca is a small genus of only 15 species of small woody evergreen shrubs, ranging from the Western Himalayas to Thailand, with one long lost family member that resides
Christmas boxes through the Garden Read More »
