Fragrant Flowers

Shaking up Saxatile

For two decades, we’ve grown the amazing Chinese jack-in-the-pulpit, Arisaema saxatile with its delightful lemon-fragranced flowers. The most frustrating part was its slow offsetting nature, which meant we rarely had any to share. Eighteen months ago, we dug our main clump and moved most of it from a well-shaded site to a location that would

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Goin tubing in the garden

We’ve got a different take on going tubing. For us, tubing is something we do, starting in mid-June each summer, when we sit and enjoy our patch of Sinningia tubiflora. This amazing South American (Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay) gesneriad (African violet cousin) forms masses of underground potato-like tubers, which produce these amazing stalks of sweetly

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Winter Bridal Bouquet

Flowering this week is our selection of Magnolia floribunda ‘Bridal Bouquet’. When we visited Yunnan, China in 1996, we were able to return with three seed of Magnolia floribunda, a species which seemed completely absent from American horticulture. The resulting seedlings were planted into the garden, where two promptly died during the first winter. Thankfully,

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Tubing! Hummers! Summer!

The genus Sinningia is a South American gesneriad (African violet and gloxinia relative). Hummingbirds and butterflies just love the tubular flowers of Sinningia, and several species including Sinningia tubiflora, are quite fragrant. Sinningia flowers come in a wide array of colors from white, to yellow, pink, red and all shades in between. Sinningia species are

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Crinum ‘Improved Peachblow’

Early June is an amazing time for crinum lilies in the gardens here at Juniper Level and here’s one of our favorites, photographed yesterday.  Crinum ‘Improved Peachblow‘ is simply amazing…great flower form, sturdy stems, pink buds that open white, and a fragrance that’ll make a honeysuckle jealous.  Crinum lilies are very easy to grow, but

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Sweet box begin sweet

One of the great winter-flowering evergreen perennials is in full flower now.  Sarcococca hookeriana var. humilis, aka sweet box is a fascinating boxwood relative that forms a dense groundcover in shade.  What make sweet box special are the intensely fragrant flowers toward the end of winter.  All sarcococca are similar in form and flowering, varying

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