As an avid bromeliad collector back in the 1970s, I’ve had a long fascination with members of the bromeliad family. Although, I’m long past my house plant days, I continue to test bromeliads from cold climates for their adaptability in our Zone 7b NC garden. So far, we’ve had one member of the genus Puya
Can you say Poo-yuh? Read More »
One of our favorite of the US native (Central Texas) desert ferns is Pellaea ovata. Here is our clump in the crevice garden looking quite nice this week. This is scheduled to return to the Plant Delights catalog in January. Hardiness should be at least Zone 7b and south.
Tis the season for prickly pear harvest. Many of our early ripening prickly pears are beginning to change from green to red, providing a lovely feature in the fall garden. Here is our clump of Opuntia pyrocarpa this week. We hope everyone’s prickly pear is growing well from our giant prickly pear pad giveaway at
Ripe pears…prickly pears Read More »
Try as we might, we have been epic failures trying to grow the showy southwest native Zauschneria (now epilobium) in our garden, due to the combination of high humidity and torrential summer rainfalls. No matter where we tried them in the rock garden, they quickly expired. That was in the years BC…before crevice. Here is
Holy Zauschneria, Batman! Read More »
We admit to a long-standing case of buckwheat envy. Every visit to the worlds great rock gardens, such as the Denver Botanic Garden, leave us lusting to grow the rock garden genus, eriogonum. We’ve killed many members of the genus, since they truly hate our humid and wet summers. Even our crevice garden was no
Long-leaf Buckwheet Read More »
We are fascinated with the wonderful genus zephyranthes (rain lilies). Zephyranthes are unobtrusive, summer-flowering bulbs that can fit in any garden, with a flower color ranging from yellow to white to pink. The great thing about zephyranthes is the lack of large foliage that often accompanies many other spring-flowering bulbs, so site them in the
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
Looking good this week is Nierembergia ‘Starry Eyes’. We have special memories watching our friend Carl Schoenfeld collect cuttings of this on our 2002 botanizing trip to Argentina. While it’s only reliably winter hardy to Zone 8, it’s a flowering machine during the summer. Here it is growing in our new crevice planting near our
No, we’re not talking about your favorite football or basketball team, but the amazing blue Mediterranean fan palm. Here’s our oldest (16 year) specimen in our alpine rock garden this week. Chamaerops humilis is a Southern Europe native that’s marginally hardy in our region, but the blue form, know as var. cerifera (or var. argentea).
Are you a blue fan? Read More »
Our patch of Aloe cooperi has been beautiful in flower this summer, but every time I see it, my mind automatically associates it with rocker, Alice Cooper. I guess he made quite an impression on me as a child. Aloe cooperi is the hardiest of the aloes, first cousin to the better known Aloe vera.
Cooperi…Aloe, not Alice Read More »
