With the advent of A-I, finding accurate horticultural information on-line has become even more challenging, so we thought we’d take time to explain which type of on-line sources you can trust and which you probably shouldn’t. Let’s begin by breaking down gardening websites into information sources levels. From most to least trustworthy, those include: Primary
It’s Online, so it must be Correct Read More »
The amazing glade fern, Diplaziopsis pycnocarpa has long been one of our favorite native ferns, but it’s a bit of a loner. This fern, whose native range is from Maine to Louisiana, also has a bit of an identity crisis, formerly being known as Homolasorus pycnocarpus, Diplazium pycnocarpon, Athyrium pycnocarpon, and before that, several other
From the Glade to your Shade Read More »
We’re just wrapping up the flowering of the “starfish” group of cast iron plant species. While none are reliably winter hardy in the ground here in Zone 7b/8a, they make amazing house plants. The first and second are Aspidistra pulchella, and the final two images are Aspidistra radiata. The giant upright purple flower buds on
Casting for Starfish Read More »
From an ex-situ conservation standpoint, we are a bit fanatical about trilliums. We grow many thousand trilliums from seed each year, and also travel around the country studying trilliums in the wild, which has given us an incredible opportunity to make some amazing selections. At JLBG, we currently grow over 1,600 different trillium selections, which
Trillium – Round 2 Read More »
We’ve just named the third selection of our Rohdea x japensis (Rohdea japonica x Rohdea chinensis) hybrid this winter, this one for its incredible fruit show. We’ve christened this Rohdea x japensis ‘Super Fruit’. Later this winter, we’ll divide our original clump and start down the production pipeline, which should take about 5-6 years to
I remember watching the first Planet of the Apes movie in 1968, and being struck by the depiction of Earth’s landscape after a nuclear war in which humans were wiped out. Unquestionably, humans manipulate landscapes for our own use, and have done so since we evolved into two legged creatures some 4-5 million years ago.
I have seen the Garden’s Future Read More »
We’ve written before about our plant collection rescue efforts, and last week, we were fortunate to conduct yet another of those important missions. This was the rescue of the Flory/Flagg/Smith rain lily collection. Walter Flory and Ray Flagg are two of the biggest names in the rain lily world over the last 70 years, while
You would think with 220 new Aspidistra (cast iron plant) species discovered since 1980 that botanists would have found them all, but that seems to be far from the case. This oddity just flowered in our collection this month, and is obviously yet another new species. This is one of the final collections (2018) made
Cast-ing a Wider Net Read More »
One of the poster horticultural children for fall flowering is the Chinese native, Hibiscus mutabilis. Because this plant has been shared so widely as a pass-along in deep south gardens, it picked up the common name, confederate mallow. The specific epithet name “mutabilis” was selected because many of the clones have flowers that emerge white,
The Mutable Mallow Read More »
For those of us in the mail order nursery, the closure of any of our compatriots seems like a death in the family. As I’ve mentioned earlier this year, the decline in retail sales across many sectors has devastated the mail order garden industry. So many of the nurseries we value so highly are those
