We were recently checking our nursery swamp pink seedlings of Sabatia foliosa and to our surprise we found that most of the offspring looked nothing like the parent. Unbeknownst to us, our garden plant from which we gathered seed had been sexually involved with a nearby Sabatia kennedeyana. The resulting crop of plants were perfectly
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Flowering now is the amazing Hymenocallis azteciana, from Northern Mexico. The wide glacous foliage, which doesn’t emerge until June, is enough reason to grow this dazzling spider lily, but the clumps are also topped with 3′ tall spikes of narrow-petalled white flowers, which open each evening. Our form is from an original collection in Jalisco,
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Looking great in the garden is the amazing Acorus calamus ‘Argenteostriatus’, a deciduous wetland perennial, native to Kazakhstan. Acorus calamas has been used by humans since at least 1300 BC, when the Egyptians documented using the fragrant rhizomes and roots to create perfumes. Purportedly, early North American settlers used this for a psychotropic experience. This
One of the most amazingly stunning North American native plants we’ve ever had the pleasure to introduce is Saururus cernus ‘Hertford Streaker’. Below is it in the nursery this week. This perennial is found in swampy bogs from Canada south to Texas. In smaller and more intricate gardens, it’s probably not appropriate since it is
This winter, we were mulling over options for our a bed along the walkway to our nursery and garden office. We had previously had a narrow raised bed, but this was backing up rain water on our sidewalk. The garden and research staff proposed that we remove the raised bed and install a bog garden/rain
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