Lespedeza ‘Little Volcano’ puts on quite a show each fall. Here it is in the garden this fall in full bloom. This amazing dieback perennial reaches an amazing 7′ tall x 15′ wide in good soils and full sun. Our friend Ted Stephens is responsible for bringing this gem from Japan to US gardeners.
Exploding Little Volcano Read More »
For the first time in years, our olive (Olea europea ‘Arbeqina’) here at JLBG is loaded with fruit. It’s been a while since we’ve had a crop, not because of cold, but because a f..xy!!!zz? beaver cut our tree completely to the ground several years ago. We offered this through Plant Delights for many years,
Fresh Olive Oil…anyone? Read More »
We take quite a few photos of the sky in addition to all of our plant images, but this recent cloud formation in front of JLBG bore a striking resemblance to the famed mushroom clouds which appear after the detonation of a small nuclear device. Isn’t nature amazing!
Mushrooms in the Sky Read More »
Here’s a recent image of the amazing Colocasia esculenta ‘Maui Sunrise’, still looking great in late October! Moist, rich soils and full sun are the key for your plants to look this spectacular! Winter hardiness is Zone 7b and warmer.
Apologies for commandeering the famed Duke Ellington line, but it seems appropriate for the new Colocasia ‘Waikiki’. When we first met Hawaii’s John Cho in 2003, we knew some special elephant ears would be the result of our collaboration, but it was hard to imagine something like the seriously tricked-out Colocasia ‘Waikiki’. Almost every year,
It ain’t worth a thing if it ain’t got that bling! Read More »
Since we are limited in the number of hardy century plant species, our only option for more agave diversity in the garden is to create it by crossing existing hardy species together. Here are a few of our recent successes. Agave x amourifolia is a Plant Delights/JLBG creation from a cross we made in 2016
Sex for the Centuries Read More »
To most folks, especially car collectors and gearheads, Hemi’s refer to hemispherical combustion engines, but to those of us hortheads, Hemi’s refer to a group of gesneriads (African violet relatives) in the genus Hemiboea. We started growing the fall-flowering hemiboeas in the early 1990s, thanks to Atlanta gardeners, Ozzie Johnson and Don Jacobs, both of
A Horticultural Hemi Read More »
There are several freckled/variegated selections of beauty berry (callicarpa) on the market, but virtually all are variegated forms of Asian species. We were excited to learn that plantsman Ted Stephens of Nurseries Caroliniana had found a speckled form of the native Callicarpa americana on his property in South Carolina. Our garden plant of his C.
Perfuming the garden this week are the amazing Osmanthus fragrans. This Chinese native evergreen shrub is unquestionably the most fragrant flowering plant in the garden. When the clusters of small flowers open early October, they emit a sweet fragrance that can easily waft for 200 feet. While we have nine clones in the gardens at
The Fragrance of Fall Read More »
Outside of the nerdy members of the International Oak Society, few gardeners have ever heard of Quercus x vilmoriniana. This spectacular oak is a hybrid between the Asian Quercus dentata and the European Quercus petraea. Quercus x vilmoriniana has been known in European gardens since 1894, but is rarely seen in US gardens. The hybrid
