Looking lovely in the garden now is the Purple Velvet Bean vine, Mucuna cyclocarpa. This lowland native to Southeastern China makes a superb deciduous vine that flowers non-stop from mid-summer until fall. To us, the bizarre fleshy flower clusters look like those characters from the old Fruit of the Loom commercials. Interestingly, we must not
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Looking lovely at JLBG now is the purportedly tropical vine, Combretum indicum. Native from a wide range of Southeast Asia, Rangoon creeper is a woody vine that’s shockingly winter hardy, as our plants sailed through last years 11 degrees F–despite it usually being listed as a Zone 10/11 plant. The flowers usually open white, age
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I’m just back from a quick 24-hour trip to NYC for a special tribute to a dear friend, Margaret Roach. Wave Hill Gardens in the Bronx, was hosting a garden fundraising dinner to salute this legendary garden communicator. Accompanying me was NCSU CALS College Advancement Director of Development, Alycia Thornton, who manages the fundraising for
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Below are three of our final selections of Agave x ovox, which we made out of several hundred seedlings. These are each sister seedlings from our cross of Agave ovatifolia x Agave pseudoferox ‘Bellville’ It’s always interesting to see how many different ways the genes sort out. These are from our 2018 cross, and only
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Athyrium shearei is a fascinating fern, given to us many years ago by fern guru, Dr. John Mickel. We’ve yet to offer it because we’re not sure if anyone would purchase it since some folks may think the dark central veining may look like something is wrong with the plant…which it is not. This deciduous
Think of it as an agave in drag. Sedum ‘Pride and Joy’ makes a unique combination in the early fall garden by adorning the base of this manly Agave ovatifolia.
This spring, I was fortunate to be able to visit the former garden of the late Camellia guru, Dr. Clifford Parks. One of the many plants that took our breath away was this unlabeled evergreen azalea. We were able to root cuttings, but now, I’m hoping someone out there in horticulture land will recognize it
Ever since I first saw Lycopodiella prostrata as a young child, I have been fascinated with this alien-looking oddity. Botanically, these belong to a primitive group of plants known as clubmosses. Every trip to the coast, I seem to wind up with a small piece to try in the garden, and every time, I fail.
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Everyone grows the Asian butterfly bushes because of their huge flower panicles, but there are some really cool native buddleias that are mostly overlooked. Below is Buddleia marrubifolia from Presidio, Texas. Native to the Chihuahuan Desert, mature plants can reach 6′ tall x 6′ wide. The hairy white foliage serves as a nice foil for
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Here’s our clump of Chrysopsis gossypina in the garden this week, looking shockingly like a South African Helichrysum petiolare (straw flower). This little-known Southeast US native (Virginia to Mississippi) is usually found on dry, sandy soils. So far, our plants of the short-lived cottony golden aster are thriving in our well-drained agave/cactus berms. The yellow
