A few years ago, we purchased seed of Iberis gibralterica, an African perennial candytuft. What we got instead was a lavender flowered form of the annual candytuft, most likely, Iberis umbellata. Imagine, a mail order nursery sending out a mis-identified plant. In our crevice garden, it puts on an early spring, show, before going dormancy
What a lovely surprise to find our native liver leaf (Hepatica americana) in flower in the garden on Christmas day. This fabulous North American native, evergreen perennial, is found in moist woodlands, throughout the Eastern US. Because this collection is from Western South Carolina, it’s flowering months earlier than forms from colder regions. The common
Liver for Christmas Read More »
Emerging in the woodland garden now are the amazing toothworts of the former genus, Dentaria. Dentaria ‘Green Snowflake’ below, is our 2017 introduction of our hybrid between two natives, Dentaria heterophylla and Dentaria dissecta. This foliage sailed through our recent low temperatures of 15 degrees F. In another eight weeks, the clump will be topped
Here come the Green Snowflakes Read More »
We’re enjoying the mid-summer show of grass-leaf Barbara’s buttons, Marshallia graminifolia ‘Georgetown’. We grew this from a Patrick McMillan/Zac Hill seed collection near Georgetown, SC. Marshallia graminifolia is a coastal plain endemic, found from NC to Georgia, where it forms a short basal rosette of narrow, linear foliage, that’s topped with 20″ tall flowers stalks,
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 »
Most folks only know daphnes that retain evergreen foliage, but one of our favorite exceptions is the Chinese native, Daphne genkwa, which happens to be in full flower at JLBG this week. This floriferous species needs moist, but well-drained soils, unlike so many of its European counterparts. Unlike the commonly grown, Daphne odora, it has
The Naked Chinese Daphne Read More »
In 2021, our staff spotted one of our patches of Ajuga ‘Black Scallop’, in which part of the clump had mutated to a form which had foliage that was nearly 2-3 times as large as the original. We moved the sport nearby and watched it over the next three years until we were sure the
In 2022, we introduced Ruellia sp. nov. ‘Humility’, a new, still unpublished Southeast US native species, found in 2013, by our taxonomist, Zac Hill, in southern Alabama. Until it’s formally published with an official name, we gave it a cultivar. Not only is it easy to grow, and attractive in flower, but the October foliage
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
One of our favorite rock garden perennials for summer color is the amazing Ruellia ‘Black Beauty’. We love this small, easy-to-grow, unobtrusive perennial, and spent over a decade searching for it after we first saw it in the Maryland garden of the late Alexej (Sasha) Borkovec, where it occurred as a probable hybrid of East
