Last weekend, Anita and I watched as one of our indoor cats, Jake, was glued to the glass door as a common box turtle sauntered, seemingly purposely down our 50′ long sidewalk and toward the door. It (he?/she?) finally stopped just a few feet short of the door, where it just sat and stared, with
Only 20 spaces remain for our first JLBG Endowment fundraiser on June 14 from 3-8pm. This is a first opportunity for visitors to tour Tony and Anita’s private home garden, located adjacent to JLBG. This link takes you on a short walking tour of some of the garden highlights. Below are a few images from
Private Garden Fundraiser Read More »
Twenty years ago this year, we published this hypothetical catalog piece about what it would be like if airlines sold plants, which is still pertinent today. IF AIRLINES SOLD PLANTS Customer: Hi. How much are your plants? Clerk: Well, ma’am, that all depends on a lot of things. Customer: Is there an average plant price?
If Airlines Sold Plants Read More »
I was lucky enough to catch the winter fruit show on our clump of Iris foetidissima last weekend. This little-known, evergreen, woodland iris from southern Europe, suffers because of its specific epithet “foetidissima”, which means stinking. That’s probably a bit much coming from someone with hundreds of amorphophallus clones. The name reportedly was given because
Starting off the new year is our flowering clump of the Taiwanese endemic wild ginger, Asarum hypogynum. The huge, glossy, evergreen patterned foliage is enough reason to grow this gem, but through most of the winter, the incredible floral display silently sits virtually unnoticed by most human visitors. JLBG currently houses one of the largest
Coming in second place to the Helleborus niger we posted earlier is Helleborus x ballardiae ‘Mahogany Snow’. This is a cross of the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger and Helleborus lividus. The flowers emerge white, then age to a lovely salmon pink. We find this hellebore hybrid much easier to grow than either parent.
The Christmas Rose Bowl Read More »
We’re preparing for the release of a new cast of characters for 2024, through our current funding arm, Plant Delights Nursery. One of the “cast” that we’ve been trialing for six years is a new cast iron plant hybrid from Japan, Aspidistra ‘Hanado Raku’ PPAF. This is one of those plants that elicits all kind
A New Cast of Characters Read More »
Looking lovely in the garden during the Christmas holiday season is a plant that hails from around the world, most notably Iran, and into the surrounding Caucuses. Despite this disparate climatic origin, Danae racemosa has thrived in much of the country as a pass-along plant for over a century. Danae is one of many plants,
A Laurel and Hardy Garden Addition Read More »
The thuds on the roof of our nursery office isn’t the hooves of eight reindeer, but instead is that of the roof height citrus trees planted nearby, dropping their newly ripened fruit. Here are two Citrus ‘Ichang Lemon’ fruit that dropped into my pocket on a recent garden walk. Well aided by gravity, these dense,
At the lowest levels of the horticultural world are those plants that naturally carpet the forest floor. One of our favorites belongs to the genus Aspidistra, commonly known as cast iron plants. During the spring and summer, they are barely noticed in the garden, but as everything else around them goes dormant in fall, their
