We’ve long enjoyed the tropical-looking Arailia family genus, Tetrapanax…in spite of it’s root suckering tendancies. You would think that plants that root suckered would be easy to propagate, but that’s interestingly not always the case. The common form of rice paper plant, which dies to the ground each winter in our climate, isn’t a problem,
Over a period of years, we’ve tried three different clones of the Eastern Himalayan (India to Myanmar) native banana, Musa ornata, with no luck getting them to survive. We finally gave up, concluding that it simply wasn’t winter hardy here, living up to its on-line reputation of being a Zone 9-11 plant. That was before
Hedychium ‘Raffillii’ is hard to miss in the mid-August garden, with its brilliant floral show. It’s little wonder this 1941 Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit (AGM) winner is touted as one of the finest ginger lilies ever introduced. For us, this Hedychium coccineum selection is one of the earlier ginger lilies to flower,
It’s hard to resist humming the Village People’s 1979 disco tune, In the Navy, every year when the amazing Agapanthus ‘Navy Blue’ comes into full bloom. From our kitchen window, it’s certainly looking quite stunning in the summer garden. Although a single flower head isn’t as large as some other cultivars, the mere show power
Hibiscus ‘Summer Carnival’ is looking rather exceptional and unfazed in the garden, as we approach a week of temperatures in the 100s F. This amazing introduction from plant breeder Hans Hansen at Walters Gardens is the first stable variegated hardy hibiscus. This can be grown as a marginal aquatic, or as we have it planted
A Hot Summer Carnival Read More »
When I first read the 2010 paper describing the discovery of an orange-flowered Musella (dwarf yellow banana), I was hopelessly hooked, and my heart filled with lust. Hanging out at 4,000′ elevation in China’s Sichuan province was a previously undiscovered population of only 130 orange-flowered plants, compared the more typical yellow. When you have grown
If Live Gives you Bananas, Make ’em Orange Read More »
One of our favorite fall-flowering trees is the tropical-looking Schefflera delavayi. As a child, I was always enamored with schefflera on our family vacations to Florida, never dreaming it would be possible to grow these “tropicals” in our Raleigh garden. Fast forward 60 years, a number of “hardy” schefflera species in the Arailaceae family have
Delavay’s Schefflera is a now a Heap of Pleureum Read More »
One of the more spectacular genera of fall-flowering plants is the tobacco relative, Brugmansia, in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. The genus, Brugmansia, was named in 1805 to honor Sebald Brugmans (1763–1819), a natural history professor at Leiden University, Netherlands. These fragrant flowers are designed to attract pollinators that include large, nocturnal hawkmoths. Below is our clump of
Brugman’s Angel Trumpets Read More »
The wonderful ginger lily, Hedychium ‘Anne Bishop’ is making a stunning show in the mid-October garden with it’s incredible display of huge heads of fragrant orange flowers. We’ve never been able to track down the origin of this cultivar, or the identity of this particular Anne S. Bishop. Not only does this put on a
Anne Bishop is a Late Bloomer Read More »
(aka: Costus speciosus) Hellenia speciosa ‘Wizard of Oz’ is an amazingly winter hardy form of the typically warm tropical, southeast Asian native crepe ginger. This gem is a 2013 Ozzie Johnson collection from near Yan Ming, Vietnam at 3,900′ elevation. Emerging in mid-June (NC), the thick, fleshy green stalks, quickly rise to 6′ tall. The
