We see quite a few television adds for an alcoholic drink known as “twisted tea”, so we thought we’d share the OG twisted tea, Camellia sinensis ‘Unryu’, in flower this week at JLBG. Camellia sinensis is the source of tea, and the Japanese cultivar, ‘Unryu’ means contorted or twisted, which refers to the branch structure.
Although the title sounds like it, we’re not promoting a new Woody Allen flick. It seems that despite having 27 agaves in the garden flower this spring and summer, three more have taken leave of their proverbial senses, and started sending up flower spikes that won’t open until fall, including the top Agave x amourifolia
The Smell of Love and Death is in the Fall Air Read More »
We love our adult ivies…the well behaved adult shrub forms of the pesky vines. Based on our observations, so do the native pollinators, which flock to them like nothing else in our fall garden. Pictured below is our nine year-old clump of Hedera colchica ‘Green Spice’ flowering in early October. This is an adult form
Our Favorite Spice Girl – Green Spice Read More »
One of the superstars in our fall garden every year is the amazing Aloysia virgata, better known as tree verbena. Our 24 year old clump, pictured below is grown here as a dieback perennial. From the ground in spring, this South American (Argentina, Brazil) native reaches 10-12′ tall by fall in our zone 7b/8a garden.
We’ve long admired the woodland genus Veratrum, for both their large, pleated, orchid-like basal foliage, and also for their tall flower spikes. Having grown fifteen of the twenty-seven known corn lily species, we can confidently say that fourteen of them don’t like our hot, humid summers. The lone survivor from our years of trials is
Corn Lilies…Been there, Killed that Read More »
The September fragrance of tea olives are unmistakable in the garden, when the flower season gets started here at JLBG. Open house visitors are always shocked at the incredible sweet aroma from these amazing Asian (China, Japan, Korea, and Thailand) native evergreens. Below is our 23 year old plant of Osmanthus fragrans var. aurantiacus. I
Sweet Tea Olive Season Read More »
Long ago, we gave up our red plastic hummingbird feeders for a more natural way to attract hummers to the garden, and one of the best is the Southwest US native Anisacanthus wrightii. Starting for us in August, it continues to be a blaze of glory through September. Texas firecracker prefers full sun and dry
Natural Hummingbird Feeders Read More »
Rudbeckia truncata is a very rare coneflower (G2G3 rank – high to moderate risk of extinction), restricted to a small region of alkaline bluffs from Kentucky south into the Georgia mountains. Although named in 1898 by the late botanist J.K. Small, subsequent taxonomists, who obviously didn’t bother to grow the plant, incorrectly lumped it into
Rudbeckia truncata – another “Small” Coneflower Read More »
Going bowkers in the garden now is the South African Chlorophytum bowkeri. Named after the late South African botanist J.H. Bowker (1822-1900), this perennial is an African native (Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa, and Zimbabwe), non-running spider plant that can be found in damp grasslands and forest margins to 6,000′ elevation. In the garden, it has
Looking fabulous in the woodland garden as August gives way to September is the Chinese Begonia grandis ‘Alba’. We never have enough plants that will flower in the summer/fall woodland garden, so I can’t imagine a garden without cold hardy begonias. The sprays of white flowers and red backed leaves make B. grandis ‘Alba’ a
