shade garden

Neolepisorus fortunei 'Green Ribbons'

Decorate the Woodland with Green Ribbons

Looking lovely in the mid-January winter garden is the fern, Neolepisorus fortunei ‘Green Ribbons’. This fascinating evergreen fern looks nothing like what most gardeners are familiar with, when they think ferns. Neolepisorus is one of several genera of ferns, known as ribbon ferns. These ferns grow epiphytically (on trees) and lithophytically (on rocks), mostly in

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Iris foetidissima in fruit

Fruity Pebbles

I was lucky enough to catch the winter fruit show on our clump of Iris foetidissima last weekend. This little-known, evergreen, woodland iris from southern Europe, suffers because of its specific epithet “foetidissima”, which means stinking. That’s probably a bit much coming from someone with hundreds of amorphophallus clones. The name reportedly was given because

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Helleborus x ballardiae 'Mahogany Snow'

The Christmas Rose Bowl

Coming in second place to the Helleborus niger we posted earlier is Helleborus x ballardiae ‘Mahogany Snow’. This is a cross of the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger and Helleborus lividus. The flowers emerge white, then age to a lovely salmon pink. We find this hellebore hybrid much easier to grow than either parent.

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Aspidistra 'Hanado Raku'

A New Cast of Characters

We’re preparing for the release of a new cast of characters for 2024, through our current funding arm, Plant Delights Nursery. One of the “cast” that we’ve been trialing for six years is a new cast iron plant hybrid from Japan, Aspidistra ‘Hanado Raku’ PPAF. This is one of those plants that elicits all kind

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Danae racemosa in fruit

A Laurel and Hardy Garden Addition

Looking lovely in the garden during the Christmas holiday season is a plant that hails from around the world, most notably Iran, and into the surrounding Caucuses. Despite this disparate climatic origin, Danae racemosa has thrived in much of the country as a pass-along plant for over a century. Danae is one of many plants,

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Falling for Spikemoss

We were recently admiring the lovely russet fall coloration of a mat of Selaginella uncinata. This lovely woodland groundcover from Central China and south into Vietnam, has a lovely metallic blue hue during the growing season, but we also like this change to the semi-evergreen foliage in fall. This is such a great, well-behaved garden

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Bells from Jiangxii

Hemiboea subacaulis var. jiangxiensis ‘Jiangxi Bells’ is looking great in the garden over the last month. This gem is an amazing new, hardy gesneriad from a joint collection by Scott McMahon (Atlanta Botanic Garden), and Mark Weathington (JCRA). Discovered in Jinggangshan, China, this seems to be a new species to cultivation. The 1′ wide, fuzzy-leaf

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Here’s Looking at You, Ginger

The coolest plant feature in the garden this week are the seed pods on the woodland ginger, Zingiber mioga ‘Lushan Gold’. We’ve grown many different forms of Zingiber mioga, but none like ‘Lushan Gold’. First, this exceptional Chinese collection from Atlanta Botanic Gardens’ Scott McMahon clumps instead of runs like all the commercial forms. Secondly,

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