Looking great in the garden today is the miniature elephant ear, Colocasia bicolor ‘La La La’. This is our 2005 collection from 2,200′ elevation in Vietnam’s Son La province. This isn’t a fast grower, which is why it’s taken us 20 years to grow a patch this large. Since seemingly every province in the region
We’ve written many times about the huge number of plants we’ve killed, but we find that’s the best way to learn. Often, we have a good idea if a particular plant will be successful, and sometimes, it’s just a random attempt. Such was the case, when we planted a cultivar of Rocky Mountain subalpine fir,
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Looking particularly phallic in the garden is our twelve year old specimen of Carpinus betulus ‘Columnaris Nana’ This slow growing, dwarf selection of European hornbeam eventually matures with great age at 22′ tall, so our 6′ tall plant still has a ways to go. We really like these as a garden feature where a non-pruned
Looking great in the garden now is our specimen of Turkish Fir, Abies bornmuelleriana. Our 27 year old specimen was planted as a young seedling, and has shown none of the root disease problems associated with our similar looking native, Abies fraseri. This is despite it being planted where the roof gutters dump water. The
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Is anyone other than us growing, the Japanese woodland perennial, Ainsliaea cordifolia? This odd member of the aster family has strikingly patterned foliage, but for us, has been painfully slow to grow. The plant below is all we have after 18 years of cultivation of a plant we purchased originally from Barry Yinger’s Asiatica Nursery.
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While the genus Oxalis has a few species that are known “bad actors”, it has many others that are amazing garden gems. One of our favorites has always been Oxalis palmifrons. Hailing from South Africa’s Southwest Cape Province, this gem forms texturally-fascinating, ground-hugging rosettes, that are right at home in the rock garden. We grow
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Our oldest patch of Adonis amurensis ‘Fukujukai’ is now 18 years old and looking lovely in the winter garden this week. This a cold climate plant from The Russian Far East, Korea, and into Northern Japan, so it generally doesn’t love the hot, humid south, but this is one of a few clones that have
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We love the winter color forms of the fascinating spikemoss, Selaginella tamariscina. This Asian (China, Japan, Korea, Russia, India, Taiwan, Thailand, and Philipines) native naturally has solid green foliage, but through the centuries, Japanese gardeners have made countless selections with colored foliage. I’m particularly fond of Selaginella ‘Golden Sprite’ (below). In growth, these make very
I remember first seeing on-line images of Agave bracteosa ‘Monaco Princess’ over two decades ago, and it was lust at first sight. Tracking down my new found target of desire proved much more difficult than I could have ever imagined. After some deep on-line dives, I was able to determine that the plant was discovered
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We love our Mediterranean blue fan palms! While there are several blue foliaged palms for gardeners in tropical climates, Chamaerops (Kam her hops) humilis var. argentea is the only one we’ve found reliable in our Zone 7b/8a garden. Mediterranean blue fan palm hails from high elevations in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, where it eventually
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