You go straight through to the round of botanical superstars if you recognize this little-known southeast native (SC to Florida), Piriqueta caroliniana. This Patrick McMillan collection from coastal SC has thrived all summer in our full sun rock garden, flowering constantly, with new flowers opening every other day. This oddity is a member of the
One of the stars of our late summer/early fall garden has been our selection of Chrysopsis mariana ‘Little Miss Sunshine’. We made this roadside collection of this East Coast native in 2020 in neighboring Orange County, NC, unsure of what we had collected, but loving the purple stems of this clone. This planting in our
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We’ve had Salvia ‘Rockin’ Deep Purple’ on trial since 2018, and it’s now headed for our January Plant Delights catalog. Although we love the Argentinian Salvia guaranitica, it spreads far too fast to be useful in many of our garden beds. We have been trialing a number of hybrids with Salvia guaranitica and an array
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How many folks are growing Hypericum hypericoides (St. Andrew’s cross)? The name translates to hypericum that looks like a hypericum….duuuh. We love this native shrub which hails from New Jersey southwest to Texas. St. Andrew’s cross typically matures at 2.5′ tall x 5′ wide and adorned from May through September with small, light yellow flowers,
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Flowering this week at JLBG is the amazing Miscanthus transmorrisonensis. Many gardeners, who blindly believe everything they read/hear think the genus miscanthus is the horticultural version of the devil itself. Like everything in life, it’s all about those pesky details, which so many people simply don’t want to be bothered with. Most miscanthus in the
Opening up a Mis-can-thus of worms Read More »
We think Juliet would agree that Cuthbertia rosea is one sweet perennial. Looking great now is the southeast native (Maryland south to Florida) spiderwort, Cuthbertia rosea, which for us, begins its flowering season in spring, and continues sporadically through the summer months. Native primarily to dry sand, this easy-to-grow perennial has exceptional drought tolerance. Like
A rosea by any other name would look as sweet Read More »
One of the little-known of the native orchids is flowering now at JLBG. Habenaria repens, aka: water spider orchid, is the most widespread (NC to Texas) of the five native habenaria species. This charmer has been at home in one of our bogs for several years and has proven quite easy to grow. Hardiness is
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Re-appropriating a line from the late Buck Owens, it’s crinum time again. Crinum lilies begin their flowering season in our climate around April 1 (frost permitting). Some bloom for a short number of weeks, while other rebloom for months. Depending on the genetics, some crinum hybrids start flowering in spring, some in summer, and others
Gardeners in Zone 7b wouldn’t typically think of Angola (tropical West Central Africa) as a place to search for hardy perennials, but we’ve been thrilled with the performance of two natives of the region, Crinum fimbriatulum and Crinum jagus. The reason we kill so many plants is we try things that people with better sense
We’ve been playing around with yucca breeding for almost a decade, and now have hybrids that include from 3-5 different species. Here’s a shot of one of our evaluation beds when it was in full flower recently. Flower spike height ranged from 3′ to 10′. There should be some wild and crazy introductions once our
