Drinks anyone?
Couldn’t resist this photo of a couple of carpenter bees looking for a drink after a hard day of work, and happened on this enticing stray pitcher full of water. Oh, if they only knew…
Burgundy Spice Girl
Calycanthus ‘Burgundy Spice’ is looking so great in the garden at JLBG this fall…right before it strips down for the winter. We love this exceptional purple-foliage selection of the native Sweet Betsy, discovered and introduced by our friends, the Hesseleins’ of Pleasant Run Nursery in NJ.
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Georgia Savory
Flowering this week is the amazing Southeast native subshrub, Clinopodium georgianum. The leaves have a wonderful fragrance of strong peppermint, and the flower show isn’t bad either. This is Zac/Jeremy’s collection from Henry County, Alabama. A carpenter bee working nearby stopped in for a floral snack.
Digging Cotton
Looking lovely in the garden is week is Gossypium thurberi ‘Mt. Lemmon’…our introduction of one of the progenitors of modern day cotton. On a 2005 botanical expedition, we discovered this North American native perennial hibiscus relative, known as Desert Cotton, growing in the mountains of Arizona. In the garden, it’s a superb flowering machine for
Tarahumara Oak
One of our prize plants in the garden is the Tarahumara Oak, Quercus tarahumara. This truly odd oak is native to Northern Mexico, where it resides in the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountain range in the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango, and Sinaloa. In cultivation, Quercus tarahumara is extremely rare and of high conservation value. It seems that
The Purple Passion Mystery
Last year, we saw a listing for a new Mangave, M. ‘Purple Passion’ on the availability of a West Coast liner producer, so we ordered some to try. It was immediately evident when we unpacked the shipment, that the plants didn’t look anything like a mangave, nor did what we received match the image that
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The Monkey’s Puzzle
Back in 2010, Plant Delights made a limited offering of a hybrid monkey puzzle tree…a cross of Araucaria araucana x angustifolia, which we hoped would have the hardiness of A. araucana and the moisture tolerance of A. angustifolia. Well, a decade later, here is the result…exactly what we’ve hoped for. Our tree is now about
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Bottlebrush Splendor
Because we’ve had three consecutive mild winters, we’ve had some survivors that probably wouldn’t have made it through a normal winter. One of those plants is Callistemon viminalis ‘Light Show’, which is looking really superb this fall. Perhaps this year, we’ll get back to our more normal winter low temperatures of 5-10F, but in the
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Rigid Rods
We’ve really enjoyed the show of the native rigid golden rod this fall, aka: Solidago virgata ‘Golden Voice’. Our plant is growing in our pitcher plant bog.
Stare at our Fanny
Aster oblongifolius ‘Fanny’ (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) has put on its normal superb show this fall. Keep in mind that this gets quite large. This is a 2 year old plant from a quart pot, which has already reached its mature size of 8′ wide.
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