Balkans

It’s time for snow….roses

It’s time for the start of Christmas rose/snow rose season to begin. We were delighted to find our clump of the Balkan native, Helleborus niger ‘Jesko’ in full flower. These are always exceptional honeybee favorites, as well as being great evergreen perennials for the winter season. We find that light shade to a couple of

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Globs of Globularia

Globularia is a genus of small, rock garden-sized plants in the Plantaginaceae family, with a native distribution centered around Mediterranean Europe. I admired these during our 2012 Balkan expedition, but it wasn’t until we constructed our crevice garden empire, that we really began to have much success with the dryland plants in our wet, humid

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Procurrent Groundcover

Flowering for the last few weeks is the late winter-flowering groundcover, Arabis procurrens. This Balkan native is a rather amazing evergreen groundcover in the cabbage (Brassicaceae) family. For those who never took Latin in school, procurrens = spreading. We grow this in a fairly dry spot in the garden where it gets 2-3 hours of

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Rude Croatian

One of the gems from our 2012 botanizing trip to the Balkans, was a growable selection of Paris quadrifolia. For those who haven’t mastered Latin, quadrifolia means 4-leaves. All cultivated forms of this widespread European trillium relative had failed to thrive in our hot humid summers. Our collection from the Croatian town of Rude (I’m

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Balkan Beauty

After showing many of the hybrid hellebores, here’s where they started. Flowering now at JLBG is one of our Balkan collections of the stunning Helleborus multifidus ssp. hercegovinus, which we grow for the foliage. This clump was started from a single division of a special plant we found in Montenegro…just after we crossed the border

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