Early April is peak time at JLBG for Ajuga flowering, commonly known as bugleweed. We think these amazing new cultivars are a great solution to reducing the need for mulch in sun to part sun landscaped areas. Some of the new colored leaf cultivars are even more spectacular when in flower…below are a few.
Trumpeting Bugleweed Read More »
We’ve grown a number of herbal thymes through the years, and most either take over the garden or die in our hot, humid summer. One that has really impressed us recently is the wonderful Thymus neiceffii, known as Juniper leaf thyme. This native to the Balkan peninsula forms a ground-hugging silvery mat that looks very
Here’s a recent view from our home drive. The amazing fern patch, growing in full baking sun, is a selection of the US native Lindheimer’s maiden fern, Thelypteris ovata var. lindheimeri, which we collected a couple of decades ago, near Austin Texas, and subsequently named Thelypteris ‘Austin City Limits’. For the sake of full disclosure,
Austin City Limits Read More »
Here’s a fun spring color echo in the garden, where Yucca smalliana ‘Bright Edge’ is using Agave ‘Cordial Canary’ as a complimentary skirt and groundcover.
One of the great plants to help the winter garden look less drab are the evergreen Solomon’s seals, of the genus, Disporopsis. This Bill Baker discovery in China, was later determined to be a new species, and in 2015, was named Disporopsis bakerorum, to honor Bill. Our oldest clumps are 20″ tall x 5′ wide.
Bill Baker’s Bakerorum Read More »
Starting off the new year is our flowering clump of the Taiwanese endemic wild ginger, Asarum hypogynum. The huge, glossy, evergreen patterned foliage is enough reason to grow this gem, but through most of the winter, the incredible floral display silently sits virtually unnoticed by most human visitors. JLBG currently houses one of the largest
We were recently admiring the lovely russet fall coloration of a mat of Selaginella uncinata. This lovely woodland groundcover from Central China and south into Vietnam, has a lovely metallic blue hue during the growing season, but we also like this change to the semi-evergreen foliage in fall. This is such a great, well-behaved garden
Falling for Spikemoss Read More »
One of our favorite ferns, known as Cat’s claw fern, is putting on quite a show this fall. Onychium japonicum is a plant I’d never met until a 1996 expedition to Yunnan, China. Although it was a bit depauperate in the wild, the potential I saw, was far exceeded by its garden performance. We now
Our patch of Ajuga ‘Tropical Toucan’ is certainly lighting up the fall garden. There aren’t many groundcovers that can give a garden this kind of color and not try to take over the garden. Hardiness Zone 4a-8b.
We love it when people tell us that certain plants won’t grow in our climate. As gardening contrarians, we thrive on proving gardening experts wrong. Below is a great example–our combination of Globularia repens (Spain, Italy) and Acantholimon halophilum (Central Turkey) thriving in the dryland crevice garden. Both have sailed through out rainy, humid, hot
That Won’t Grow Here Read More »
