Here are a few of our favorite hardy Hippeastrums flowering in the garden this week. Many gardeners incorrectly know these South American bulbs as Amaryllis, which is an entirely different genus of two species of South African bulbs, which do not thrive here. Hardiness is Zone 7b-10b.
Check out those Hipps Read More »
Looking lovely this spring has been our patch of Marshall’s Barbara’s Buttons, Marshallia caespitosa. This cute perennial hails from prairies from Missouri south to Texas and will be available this fall. Hardiness is Zone 5a-8b.
In the crinum lily world, a yellow flower is considered the holy grail by plant breeders, since it only naturally exists in the Australian crinum species, Crinum luteolum. Two other species which occasionally show a yellow blush in the flower are Crinum bulbispermum and Crinum jagus. Crinum luteolum is completely ungrowable in the Southeast US.
Since we opened the Souto sun garden section of JLBG to the public, circa 2014, we’ve been dealing, rather poorly, with an unsightly water runoff capture pit on the east side of the garden. The 30′ x 30′ pit was first filled with weeds, and later converted to a bed for marginal aquatics like cannas
Bogged down, but still Rockin’ Read More »
If you’ve driven through the any of the Mediterranean countries in spring, you are undoubtedly familiar with the common Mediterranean spurge, Euphorbia characias (ker-ack-iss). For years, I admired this in virtually every English garden book, but always failed in my attempts to keep it alive in our garden. Years later, it finally hit me what
Looking great in the garden now is a dwarf witches broom selection of Norway spruce, Picea abies ‘Hereny’. Discovered by Hungary’s Józsa Miklós, and first published in 2010, it reportedly matures at 2′ tall in 20 years. Our 4 year old specimen has already reached that size, so we expect our warm summers will make
A Little Bit of Norway Read More »
Agave x protamericana ‘Funky Toes’ is looking fabulous in the garden today, having sailed through our cold winter in tip top shape. This unique form of the well-known North American native agave is an introduction of the former Yucca Do Nursery, from one of their collections in Northern Mexico. In 2018, we found a streaked
Funky Toes – No Sign of Defeet Read More »
One of the nice surprises this winter has been the performance of our hybrid Magnolia grandiflora x Magnolia coco. This 2019 seedling came through the recent 11 degrees F looking great, despite half its parentage being rather tender. While Magnolia grandiflora is certainly winter hardy here, the other parent, Magnolia coco is “reportedly” not hardy.
Cuckoo for Coco and its Kids Read More »
Few gardeners outside of California and the Pacific Northwest have tried growing Cupressus sargentiae (Sargent’s Cypress). We often assume that plants endemic to California won’t grow on the East Coast, but our trials have found such a broad assumption to be quite false. Our specimen from Patrick’s collection north of San Francisco still looks great
Cryptomeria is a monotypic genus (only one species) of conifer, native to Japan. Despite many reports that it hails from China, DNA has shown that these were brought from Japan and planted over 1000 years ago. For over 40 years, we have been fascinated with the genus and have worked to collect as many cultivars
