Meet Anne Bishop
Early fall is peak ginger lily season, and Hedychium ‘Anne Bishop’ is looking particularly stunning this week. This amazing cultivar always ranks near the very top of our favorites list.
Reveling in Ravenel’s Rattlesnake Master
Late summer/early fall is show season for Eryngium aquaticum var. ravenelii…a superb southeast native plant that’s almost unknown by native plant enthusiasts. In the wild, it grows in seasonally flooded ditches, but in the garden at JLBG, our plants thrive in typical garden soil with an average amount of moisture. Here are our plants flowering
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Mexican combo
Just caught this image of two North American (Northern Mexico) natives snuggled up closely together in the garden. At top is one of the spider lilies, Hymenocallis acutifolia, and wrapped around its ankles is Tradescantia pallida. We truly love Tradescantia pallida as a great combination-enhancing perennial that’s completely winter hardy here in Zone 7b.
Cooking up a Joe-Pye
We wanted to create a buffet for local butterflies by our patio, and a mass planting of Eupatorium purpureum ‘Little Red’ did just the trick. Not bad for a highway ditch native.
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Purple and Gold
If you visit JLBG, it’s hard to miss that we like combinations of purple and gold. Here is a favorite summer combo, planted across from the crevice garden, where we use Rudbeckia speciosa as a foot warmer for Calycanthus ‘Burgundy Spice’…a fun combo using two North American natives.
Big, Bold, and Bodacious
If you’ve got a spot for big, bold, and bodacious in your garden, it’s hard to think of a better choice than Verbesina olsenii. This giant North American (Northern Mexico) native frostweed would be great even if it didn’t flower, which it does in mid-October with giant yellow corymbs that smell like tootsie rolls.
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Riding the Wave
Looking nice this week is this cool selection of the North American (Northern Mexico) native Manfreda undulata. All commercial forms of this are heavily spotted, but we really love this this amazingly rippled-leaf form that we picked up at Bob Brown’s wonderful UK nursery a few years ago on a UK plant roundup trip. We’ve
Macbridea
Raise your hand if you’ve grown macbridea in the garden. Raise your hand if you’ve even heard of macbridea. This cute North American native (NC, SC, GA) bog mint has really impressed us in the garden. Flowering started in the last few weeks, and shows no sign of abating. We’re always cautious with mint relatives,
Artful Artemisia
We’ve long prized artemisias in the garden, many for their wonderful silver foliage and amazing texture. We’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the North American native Artemisia ludoviciana. This widespread native (or naturalized species) occurs in every US state between Canada and Mexico, and is divided into eight subspecies. Below is our specimen of
Berry Nice Coneflowers
Our 2+ year old clumps of Echinacea ‘Kismet Raspberry’ are truly stunning in the gardens this summer. The second image shows how we’ve used these as a color echo in the garden with a crape myrtle in the distance. Many of the new echinaceas are light years better than the early colored hybrids, which tended
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