Tired of trying to grow the conventional baby’s breath, that’s a prize perennial in the colder zones? We were, and had been looking for a substitute for years, when in 2000, one of our former staffers introduced us to the widespread native, Euphorbia corollata. Although it doesn’t look like much in deep shade where it’s often found in the wild, it explodes when given a bit of sun. Here are a couple of photos as it’s flowering season starts in mid-July.
Euphorbia corollata looks seriously gangly in a pot, so we’re confident you’ll never see this on the shelves of the box stores. Average moisture to very dry suites it fine. Although not a clumper, it’s spread it’s far from a thug, and is easy to remove it it happens to move too far. For a plant that’s native to every state East of the Mississippi (except Florida), and almost every single county, it’s shocking that every gardener isn’t growing this gem. Hardiness is Zone 3a-9b.
Asparagus virgatus is undoubtedly one of our favorite textural perennials. How many evergreens do you know that thrive in shade with such an amazing texture, and can be cut for flower arrangements. If you’ve ever worked with cut flowers, you’ll recognize this as “filler” that you purchase with your flowers to add 3-D texture to your arrangements. Few people, however realize that it’s an easy-to-grow garden perennial.
Although in the wild, it grows along streams, it has proven to be one of the most drought tolerant plants we grow. In terms of light, an hour or two of morning sun is fine, but this South African asparagus species much prefers light shade all day. Unless winter temperatures drop below 10 degrees F, the amazing foliage stays evergreen. Hardiness is at least Zone 7b and warmer.
We stumbled on this convention (or orgy) of the native green June beetles recently. We’ve long been fascinated with this amazing type of scarab beetle. They really don’t cause any significant garden damage…unless your garden is seriously stressed and you’re slow to pick your soft, sweet fruit like ripe figs.
In June and July, the beetles emerge from below ground, where they’ve been munching on grass roots for up to five years. As you can imagine, they’re a bit lonely…and horny. They immediately begin looking for a mate, and something to eat other than grass roots. From the look of these fellows below, they’ve found plenty of mates.
Green June Beetles actually make a great food for a variety of critters including an array of skunks, racoons, insects, birds, and even humans. Estimates of their protein content is an impressive 40-50%! No wonder some Native American tribes fire roast them to eat. On-line recipes include baking them into biscuits and wrapping them with cheese and bacon. I’m not making this up! Instead of reaching for the sprayer, perhaps we could find more sustainable ways to recycle your June beetles.
If you’re like us, you never have enough purple-foliage plants in your landscape, so we’re always on the lookout for something new. One of our finds a few years back is this purple-leaf plum from our friend Dr. Dave Creech in Texas. Prunus ‘Purple Pride’, which Dave and his staff at Stephen F. Austin State University discovered, is a seedling of the widespread native, Chickasaw plum, Prunus angustifolia, with an unknown suitor.
Many purple-leaf trees loose their color during the summer, but not Prunus ‘Purple Pride’. Our specimen at JLBG, pictured below is 4 years old. We have also not seen any sign of diseases, which often plague many domesticated prunus. This should top out around 12′ in height and 15′ in width. Supposedly, our tree will fruit eventually, and reportedly, the fruit are rather tasty. Hardiness is Zone 7a and warmer.
Here’s a photo this week of one of our favorite North American native plants, Juniperus horizontalis ‘Copper Harbor’. This would certainly add significant year round color interest to any native plant garden. In our trials, this is far and away the best of the golden Juniperus horizontalis cultivars. We offered this selection for a couple of years, but there seemed to be little interest.
Even the garden insects aren’t enjoying our extended heat wave. We caught this grasshopper hiding inside the flower of the threatened Texas endemic, Hibiscus dasycalyx last week, in search of some shade. So far, we’re experiencing the 3rd hottest summer on record in the Raleigh area.
Looking lovely today is the amazing Agave x romanii ‘Shadow Dancer’. This fascinating agave is a man-made hybrid between two Mexican species, Agave filifera and Agave mitis. Not only is it a hybrid, but this selection has a fascinating variegation pattern that’s not seen on any other century plant. The new growth emerges ghostly cream with a muted green border. As the leaves age, they green disappears and the leaves become pure parchment white. Despite the seeming lack of chlorophyll, Agave ‘Shadow Dancer’ has amazingly good vigor and doesn’t burn in full sun. This has potential winter hardiness for Zones 8b and south, but needs more trialing to know for sure. In other climates, it’s a great container specimen.
Plant nerds use the term BIO plant, short for Botanical Interest Only, for plants which have little, if any ornamental value, but are highly prized by crazed plant collectors. Spathicarpa hastifolia is such a plant. This odd aroid from Southern Brazil has actually thrived in our woodland garden since 2019. The coldest winter temperatures we’ve experienced in that period is 16 degrees F.
The small woodland plants mature at 1′ tall x 1′ wide, with oddly interesting flowers, which you can see in our image…if you squint. If this continues to perform well, and we can get it propagated, perhaps we’ll have some to share in the future. To quote our friend Bob McCartney, “We have the market cornered on plants for which there is no market.”
Here’s a recent garden combo that we’ve been enjoying with purple eucomis (pineapple lily), Agapanthus ‘Navy Blue, backed with Foeniculum vulgare ‘Purpureum’ (bronze fennel).
It fascinates us that such a widespread native like Eustoma exaltatum isn’t more widely grown in gardens. Often known by the common names prairie gentian or lisianthus, eustoma is prized by flower arrangers, but not gardeners. Eustoma is native from coast to coast…Florida to California, and north to the Canadian border in Montana.
In the wild, Eustoma exaltatum is a short-lived perennial that can also behave as a biennial or even an annual in some sites. The key is to plant it where it can happily reseed as we have done in our gravelly crevice garden, which is odd, since in the wild, they are found in moist meadows and streamsides.
Below are our plants in peak flower now, during the brutal heat of summer. So far, we’ve struggled to keep this happy in a container, in the hopes we could make this available, but we continue to try.
Commercially, eustoma has been hybridized ad nauseam to create better cut flowers, but these hybrids seem to have lost all of their perennial nature compared to the wild genetics. Our plant pictured below is the large (2′-3′ tall) subspecies russellianum from wild collected seed from Bastrop County, Texas.
It’s always exciting for us when the summer flowering surprise lilies begin to bloom, which usually happens here around mid-July. Lycoris are members of the Amaryllidaceae family, and are cousins of better-know bulbs like hippeastrum (amaryllis), zephyranthes (rain lilies), and narcissus (buttercups).
Since we grow over 700 different lycoris varieties, the flowering season goes all the way from now into October. Below are are few of the early varieties from the start of the flowering season.
Lycoris longituba ‘Buttercup’Lycoris sprengeri ‘Julyza’Lycoris x sprengensis ‘Magic Rainbow’Lycoris x sprenguinea ‘Matsuribune’
We recently ran across this clump of the summer-flowering native (Canada south to Florida) orchid, Goodyera pubescens growing in a site near JLBG. Like a century plant, the flowering rosette dies after flowering, but new side shoots are produced for future generations. Work is being done to produce this in tissue culture so it can be made more widely available from nursery propagated stock. Sadly, most plants sold today are wild collected.
Of the 100 species of Goodyera orchid, only 4 are US natives.
This spring, Plant Delights introduced Zac Hill’s 2013 discovery of a new ruellia which he found in central Alabama. What we theorized might be a natural hybrid turned out to be a brand new species, as we were informed by botanists working on getting the plant published. We hope all native plant enthusiasts purchased this to both enjoy in their garden and for ex-situ (off site) conservation value. These are in full flower during the summer. Hardiness is unknown at this point, but we know it’s fine from Zone 7b – 8b, and most likely much further north.
We’ve long loved the fern genus, Pteris (pronounced terrace), but struggled for years to find any that were winter hardy here in Zone 7b. That changed with our 1996 Chinese expedition to Yunnan Province, and later a subsequent expedition by gardening friends to Sichuan Province. On both trips, high elevation collections of Pteris vittata were made that were much more cold hardy than anything from previous introductions. Both introductions have thrive here since the late 1990s. What we also love is that these ferns thrive in full, baking sun. Even now, in mid-July, these ferns look absolutely amazing in the gardens. Plant Delights currently has one of these amazing selections for sale. Hardiness is Zone 7b-10b.
This spring, one of our flats of Rohdea japonica seedlings turned up with an inordinate number of variegated seedlings. In a flat of approximately 1,000 seedlings, we typically expect 3 – 10 variegated offspring, when the parent plant has white streaking in the middle of the leaf (L2 layer).
All of the variegated seedlings were removed and potted individually last week…all 300 of them. It will be fascinating to see what unique forms result.
We ran across this fascinating reticulated leaf form of the US native (every state east of the Mississippi) groundcover partridge berry (Mitchella repens) last week, when tromping through the woods near JLBG. We’ve taken a few cuttings that will be evaluated here for garden performance. In 60 years of botanizing, this is the first form we’ve seen with this nicely patterned foliage.
There is a “growing” trend toward using groundcovers to reduce the need for bark mulch in gardens. As with any trend, there is a time and place where it is appropriate, and other times when it is not. One plant that we absolutely love for that purpose is the evergreen Carex flacca ‘Mini’. This blue-foliaged sedge is a Mediterranean native marsh grass that spreads very slowly, so it is not a problem in overrunning other plants in the bed, as long as they aren’t placed too close. These pictured below were planted six years ago on 1′ centers, and are just now knitting together.
We have studied a few reports of this sedge being invasive in parts of the northeast US, but our trials have shown quite the opposite, with nary a seedling in over six years. We can find no scientific research that shows this sedge qualifies as being invasive using any commonly recognized definitions of an invasive plant. Our skepticism of these reports comes because some of the ridiculous listings that appear on invasive species lists, which have no scientific basis. Our favorite invasive faux pas was a listing a couple of years ago of the genus Bambusa on a state invasive list. Never mind the plant is a strict clumper and only flowers once every 100 years. Winter hardiness is Zone 4-9.
Our tallest clump of Nelson’s bear grass has been in full flower for the last month, making a spectacular site. Our specimen, which has reached 10′ in height is now 23 years old from seed. This woody lily which hails from the state of Tamaulipas in Northern Mexico forms a yucca-like stalk in the garden. All of the other hardy bear grasses have green foliage, so the blue foliage of Nolina nelsonii is quite distinct. The common name of bear grass was coined on the Lewis and Clarke expedition, when nolinas were mistaken for yuccas, which at the time were known as bear grass. Hardiness is Zone 7b-10b.
Ever since I saw my first dragon’s-eye pine over 40 years ago, I was smitten, and throughout the years have been fortunate to collect several different named cultivars with this unique trait where the new needles emerge bicolor white and green. Here is our young specimen of Pinus densiflorus ‘Burke’s Red Variegated’ looking lovely in the gardens this week. This selection of the Japanese red pine, originated as a seedling from Long Island’s Joe Burke, from the cultivar Pinus densiflorus ‘Occulis Draconis’. Hardiness is Zone 5-8.
Betula nigra ‘Summer Cascade’ is a selection of our native river birch from our friends at Shiloh Nursery in NC, that I can’t imagine gardening without. This is our 19 year old specimen looking absolutely fabulous this week. The plant patent expired last week, so now this amazing plant can be propagated by anyone. Hardiness is Zone 4b-9b.
One of the most amazing summer perennials we grow is the native Berlandiera pumila ‘Chocoholic’. It is unfathomable to us, why this isn’t grown in every full sun garden where it’s winter hardy. The flowers, which smell like milk chocolate, top the 3′ tall clump nonstop from May until October. In the wild, Berlandiera pumila can be found from NC south to Texas, so its drought tolerance is excellent. We rate this as Zone 7a to 9b, but that’s only because we don’t have feedback from folks in colder zones yet. Please let us know is you have this survive temperatures lower than 0 degrees F without snow cover!
The genus amorpha is a woody cousin to the better know genus baptisia in the Fabaceae (pea) family. Amorpha was named a genus by Linnaeus (perhaps you’ve heard of him) because the flowers only have a single petal, compared to 5, which is the norm in the rest of the family. Virtually all amorphas have many uses, from dyes to treating an array of medical conditions. There is an amorpha native in every one of the Continental United States…how many do you grow?
Our longstanding favorite member of the genus is the Midwest native Amorpha canescens, which makes a stunning, compact deciduous shrub, adorned in late spring with amazing, pollinator friendly flower spikes.
Amorpha canescensAmoropha canescens
While we had our back turned, one of our Amorpha canescens got jiggy with a nearby Amorpha fruticosa, and the baby below, discovered by our staff, has now been adopted by us, and named Amorpha x frutescens. We actually might have some of these show up in the spring Plant Delights catalog.
Amorpha x frutescens (fruticosa x canescens)
Another amazing Southeast US (NC to FL) native species we like is Amorpha herbacea. Although it is rarely available, we think this has exceptional garden value and will most like show up in the Plant Delights catalog in the coming years.
Gardeners interesting in attracting pollinators to the garden have no doubt experimented with one of the 20 native species of Pycnanthemum (mountain mint). While they are all lovely, most are too vigorously spreading to fit in a typical home garden. Enter Pycnanthemum flexuosum…the curvy mountain mint, is native from Virginia to Alabama, where it is found on moist to damp sites. This tightly clumping species is absolutely perfect for the garden, flowering now in July. This is our collection from Beaufort County, NC. We’ll be propagating this selection for a future PDN catalog. Hardiness is Zone 5-9a.
Another of our favorite early summer plants is the amazing southeast US native Dichromena colorata (aka: Rhynchospora colorata). Known by the common name, white-top star grass/sedge, this tough-as-nails groundcover can be found inhabiting moist ditches from NC to Texas. The floral show last for 1-2 months, depending on weather. Here, we have it growing in regular garden soil (sandy loam) amended with compost, and irrigated regularly. White-top sedge does spread, but not aggressively. Regardless, we’d recommend keeping away from nearby wimpy growers, which would be quickly consumed. Hardiness is Zone 7a and warmer.
I can’t imagine a summer garden without the South African woodland bulb, Scadoxus multiflorus ssp. katherine. This amazing bulb in the Amaryllis family, grows best in light, open shade, where it bursts forth sans foliage in late June. This clump is right outside our kitchen window, making it hard not to smile. Hardiness is Zone7b and warmer.
One of our favorite love lilies in our 2003 introduction, Amorphophallus konjac ‘Pinto’. This amazing dwarf never has foliage that exceeds 16″ in height. Unfortunately, the ridiculously slow growth rate has kept us from offering it again since, but perhaps one day. Here is our parent plant in the garden this week. Even if you don’t have a home garden, this form is superb in a container. We had a large crop of dwarfs from seed two years ago, and are looking for more unique new compact selections.
While most arisaemas flower in early spring, several members of the Franchetiana section of the genus are summer bloomers. There are five species in this section, but the only one that flowers in spring is Arisaema fargesii. Flowering recently are those pictured below, A. candidissumum, Arisaema franchetianum, and Arisaema purpureogaleatum. The debate still rages on whether Arisaema purpureogaleatum is merely a form of Arisaema franchetianum, but regardless, it has a distinct appearance when in flower. Of these three, Arisaema candidissimum is the least tolerant of our summer heat.
Here are a few photos of JLBG in early July…hope you can join us for our upcoming Summer Open Nursery & Garden Days, July 15-17 and 22-24, 2022, and see what’s possible in a summer garden. The nursery will also be open for attendees to shop while on-site.
Be sure to take part in our free Gardening Unplugged talks, which are held each day during the Summer Open House at 10am and 2pm, just meet at the welcome tent.
Flowering this week is one of our favorite hippeastrum…what lay people call amaryllis. We think Hippeastrum ‘Germa’ is one of the finest yellow-flowered hybrids ever created for southern gardens. Sadly, this 1995 Len Doran hybrid (Hippeastrum parodii x aglaiae x evansiae) is rarely available any longer. We’ve had our garden specimen growing since 2000. Unlike many cultivars, Hippeastrum ‘Germa’ is a woodland plant.
This is the time of year when the tiger swallowtails feast on our many patches of the amazing native Stokes aster. Our favorite clone is the upright growing Stokesia laevis ‘Peachie’s Pick’. Moist soils are best, but stokesia tolerates some dry conditions on a short term basis as long as it has 2-6 hours of sun.
We always look forward to late June with the patches of Sinningia tubiflora burst into flower. This rhizomatous perennial, first cousin to African Violets’, is rock hardy to 0 degrees F. This South American native (Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay) forms a dense deciduous groundcover, topped with these long-tubbed, honeysuckle-fragranced flowers that attract nocturnal moths with a really long proboscis.
We are in love with the long-flowering Thymnophylla pentachaeta var. pentachaeta ‘Laredo Gold’, which graces us with masses of gold flowers from spring through fall, in our sunny, dry rock garden. This Patrick McMillan collection comes from a population in Texas. Not only is this short-lived, southwestern US native reseeding perennial great in flower, but the native Navajo Indians also used it as a drug for people who want to dream of being chased by deer….we are not making this up!
We are enjoying the rare Penstemon baccharifolius this summer in our high/dry crevice garden. This species is native to limestone ledges up to 6,500′ elevation from the Edwards plateau in Texas south into Northern Mexico. This species hates our summer rains, and we had given up on growing this until we built our alkaline crevice garden a few years ago. Now it thrives, growing in 3′ deep Permatill gravel.
While doing some local botanizing recently, we ran across this fascinating form of our native Christmas fern, Polystichum acrostichoides. Not only was it more compact than any others in the area, with more “orderly” fronds, but it also showed none of the typical terminal spore production that would be expected this time of year. Since this was from a future development site, the plant was rescued, and is now at JLBG under evaluation. The second photo is more typical plant for the species for comparison, growing at JLBG.
Lagerostroemia faurei ‘Townhouse’ is looking great at JLBG this summer. This compact selection was named by the late J.C. Raulston, in addition to the taller, narrower cultivar L. ‘Fantasy’. Townhouse crape myrtle is also highly prized for its dark cinnamon bark…the darkest of any crape myrtle we know. Our oldest specimen is now 35′ tall x 35′ wide.
This selection is from an original 1957 seed collection made by the late Dr. John Creech of the US National Arboretum, on Yakushima Island off the southern coast of Japan. Hardiness is Zone 6b-9b.
One of the most Jurrasic-looking plants we grow is the North American native Ostrich fern. If you moved here from “up north” and brought some of this fern with you, chances are it failed miserably. As a rule, Ostrich fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris, hates our summer temperatures.
Fortunately, back in the mid-1980s, retired UNC-Charlotte botany professor, Larry Mellichamp picked up a heat tolerant form from Powell’s Nursery in Princeton, NC, which he promptly introduced into the trade as Matteuccia ‘The King’. Without this incredible introduction, gardens in south would not have this amazing fern in their gardens.
This is a spreading fern that prefers average to wet soils, so allow plenty of room for it to spread. Below is a patch thriving at JLBG.
There aren’t a huge number of Siberian native plants that thrive in our heat and humidity, but one that has been outstanding for us is Angelica dahurica. For those, who have traveled the world, the specific epithet “dahurica” means, from Davuria (Dahuria), a region of south-east Siberia and north-east Mongolia.
Angelica dahurica is a widely-cultivated, short-lived perennial herb that forms a stunning 6′ to 8′ tall hunk with dark purple stalks, and topped for us in June with giant Queen Anne’s Lace flowers, that’s a haven for a wide range of pollinators. The clump goes to sleep for the summer, re-emerging in fall, and remaining evergreen through the winter.
The roots of Angelica dahurica (Du Huo/Bai Zhi) have been used medicinally since 400 B.C. to cure head and body aches, blood toxicities, as a laxative/purgative, sedative, a remedy for swollen gums and toothaches, and as a topical anti-fungal cream…and the seeds are used as a culinary liqueur flavoring.
We offered these through Plant Delights for several years, but sales were miserable. So, we gave most away to staff and planted the rest in the garden, where we’re enjoying them. When are going to get folks to realize that height is what makes a garden design interesting?
We were thrilled to have Lilium bakerianum show up recently with a couple of flowers. This rare, dainty, woodland lily rarely exceeds 2′ in height. The arching stems are difficult to spot in the Chinese grasslands that they call home, unless you are lucky enough to catch them in flower. Lilium bakerianum, named after English botanist  Edmund Gilbert Baker (1864–1949), is quite variable, and as such is divided into five distinct varieties.
Our plants, which are Lilium bakerianum var. rubrum, are located at the top of our crevice garden so they are easy to appreciate when walking below.
Our OCD is on full display with many of our plant collections including the summer-flowering Crinum lilies. Our collections here at JLBG have now topped 400 crinum taxa. In addition to collecting the best plants from other breeders, we have also been making a few of our own selected hybrids. Below are a few photos of plants we have recently selected and named. None of these are available yet, and most will still be a few years away, while we build up enough stock to share.
If you’ve never grown crinums (first cousin of hippeastrum), they form huge bulbs, and thrive in full sun in average to moist soils.
Our mountain camellia (aka: Stewartia ovata) is in full flower this week at JLBG. Despite its reputation as being difficult to grow, our plant has reached 12′ tall after a decade in the ground. This native deciduous small tree can be found from Virginia south to Alabama, centered on the spine of the Appalachian mountains. Hardiness is Zone 5-8.
If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you’ll remember we wrote about this amazing native shrub/small tree last summer. Well, it’s cyrilla time again in the gardens at JLBG, when every branch of this amazing semi-evergreen erupts with racemes of small white flowers, inviting all insects in the neighborhood to stop by for happy hour. This standard form of Cyrilla racemiflora pictured below, usually matures in the 10′ to 12′ range with a spread that’s double the height. Although it is found in the wild growing in moist, sandy soils, it grows equally as well on clay soils, as long as droughty periods don’t extend too long.
Cyrilla racemiflora
We think the most exciting horticultural addition to the world of cyrillas is a dwarf, witches broom discovered by Georgia botanists, Ron Determann, and the late Tom Patrick. A witches broom is a dwarf mutation with very short internodes, most often associated with conifers. Ron allowed us to introduce this amazing plant, which he named in Tom’s memory, Cyrilla racemiflora ‘Tom Patrick’. The density of branching and size is quite amazing. Since this selection is so new, we aren’t really sure of a mature size, but we’re guessing about 6′ in height.
Working in the garden recently and stumbled on these flower calyces (the things that protect a developing flower bud) from a nearby Japanese persimmon. Nature creates the most amazing art if we just slow down enough to notice.
I first grew Korean celery for years for the flowers, never realizing it was an edible food crop…a first class edimental! I have a fascination for plants in the Apiaceae family, whose members include Angelica, Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus), carrots (Daucus), celery (Apium), parsley (Petroselenium), etc. Not only are many of the family members attractive in flower, but they are supremely attractive to pollinators, especially wasps.
Not all of my Apiaceae experiments have turned out well. More often than not, members of the family are short-lived (monocarpic or biennial), while other are prolific seeders. One which has far exceeded my expectations is the Korean native, Dystaenia takesimana.
Dystaenia takesimana is an endangered native to Ulleung Island, where it’s known by the local name, Soembadi. Most likely, dystaenia is endangered because it was also used to feed livestock (pigs). Humans eat Korean celery mostly in late winter, when it can be eaten raw like celery, or boiled, tasting quite like spinach.
This amazing evergreen perennial puts on a show with 5′ tall stalks of white umbels, starting for us in early June. When flowering is complete, the stalks die back as the new basal foliage emerges. Unlike many members of the family, the attractive cutleaf basal foliage remains evergreen all winter. You’ll see this popping up soon in an upcoming Plant Delights catalog. We hope you enjoy this as much as we have.
If you get your gardening information on-line, where everything written is a fact, you’ll know for sure that acacias aren’t growable in Zone 7b, Raleigh, NC. If that includes you, don’t look at the photo below of Acacia greggii ‘Mule Mountain’ in flower at JLBG. Acacia greggii is a native from Texas west to California. Our seven year-old specimen is from Patrick McMillan’s collection in Cochise County, Arizona.
To be nomenclaturally correct, most of the US Acacias have now been moved into the genus Senegalia, so even though the American species aren’t from anywhere near Senegal, this is now known as Senegalia greggii.
Of course, it you also read the hogwash on-line about native pollinators needed and preferring plants they evolved with, then you’ll also have to ignore the masses of native bees that cause the entire plant to buzz while they’re feeding. It’s good we don’t let our plants and insects read books or the Internet.
Look what appeared over the garden for pride month! We are so proud to have an amazingly diverse staff to go along with our diverse palette of plants. We hope you’ll all join us on the lifelong journey of celebrating diversity.
A few weeks ago, we posted images of the flower spike of our Agave ovatifolia ‘Vanzie’ just beginning to spike. Now, the giant beast is in full flower. The first photo below is the plant with its full expanded stalk in full bud, just prior to opening. After that, each image shows the progression of the flower development.
Agaves are monocarpic, so those species like Agave ovatifolia that do not make offsets will die after flowering. Agave ovatifolia is, however, one of a handful of species that usually forms baby plantlets on the tip of flowers stalk after seed set.
Agave ovatifolia ‘Vanzie’
First flowers just beginning to open
Agave ovatifolia ‘Vanzie’
We set up our Little Giant ladder, which allows us to climb up, collect pollen and to make crosses with other agaves.
The lower flower clusters open first and flowering continues to progress each day moving higher up the stalk.
Agave ovatifolia ‘Vanzie’
Climbing the ladder gives you a bird’s eye view of the amazing buds as they are ready to open…usually 200-300 per panicle.
Agave ovatifolia ‘Vanzie’
Below is a half-open flower panicle. The pollen is ripe before the stigma is ready to receive pollen, so pollen can be easily gathered without worry of self pollination.
Below is a fully open flower panicle. Each panicle weighs 5-10 pounds. No wonder the stalk needs to be so sturdy. Once the temperature warms in the morning, the flowers are abuzz with pollinators…mostly bees.
Agave ovatifolia ‘Vanzie’
Looking down from above the flower panicle makes a pretty crazy photo
Agave ovatifolia ‘Vanzie’
Our intern Zoe is working with our volunteer agave curator, Vince Schneider to gather pollen and make crosses with other previously gathered agave pollen
Agave ovatifolia ‘Vanzie’
I usually don’t climb this high…a fear of heights, but this photo opportunity was just too good to resist
One of our Paeonia ostii seedlings flowered well for the first time this year, and turned out to be semi-double flower instead of the typical single flowers. We’ll continue to observe it in future years and make sure the trait is stable, but if so, this could be a lovely addition to the world of hardy tree peonies that tolerate heat as well as cold.
People, especially male landscape architects love to use Italian Cypress in their garden designs. Few evergreen plants have the insanely narrow, upright, bean-pole shape, without benefit of pruning. We can now add a North American native counterpart to that short list, which will be welcomed since Cupressus sempervirens (Italian Cypress) doesn’t thrive in our climate.
The photo below is Juniperus virginiana ‘Silver Spear’, a Mark Weathington selection of our native red cedar. Our original plant pictured below is now 8 years old and has never been sheared. Winter hardiness should be Zone 4-9.
We love “vulgar” plants, which are good for providing unexpected shrieks from garden visitors. One of our favorite plants for evoking such moments is the European native, Dracunculus vulgaris. For those who took Latin in school, you’ll know that the English translation of the Latin name is Vulgar Dragon’s Butt. This fascinating spring ephemeral is native to very rocky, dry sites in the Southwest corner of Turkey, the Aegean Island (inc. Greece), and into the Balkans.
Virtually all of the material in commerce, which comes from the Turkish populations, are the red spathe/purple spadix form. Once you move to Crete, the inflorescences take on a different color theme with blends of white in spathe, and spadices which range from black to yellow. Below are a few which flowered at JLBG this spring.
We inherited the work of the late aroid researcher Alan Galloway, who actively hybridized dracunculus in an attempt to study the genetics as well as create new color forms for gardeners. Once final selections are made, these will require tissue culture for reproduction. Without tissue culture (dividing plants with a tiny knife), commercial quantities could never be obtained. Wish us luck!
Recently PDN staffer Chris Hardison, who heads up our marketing team, noticed an odd green meatball in a local shopping center parking lot. Upon closer examination, he found it to be a specimen of our native willow oak, Quercus phellos.
It’s obvious that the low-end mow and blow crew who take care of the plants in the parking lot assumed it to be another plant, like the hollies nearby, that needed to be butchered into the most unnatural shape possible…a green meatball.
We were curious if the oak was a natural dwarf, or was damaged when it was young, and was simply trying to resprout, when it caught the eye of the crew of horticultural butchers. It does have three smaller trunks than its nearby same age siblings, which seem to indicate damage during its youth.
To confirm this theory, we have taken cuttings and if we can get them to root, we’ll plant them out at JLBG and see if it maintains the dwarf form, which could actually be a fascinating option for homeowners. The second image below shows the green meatball oak in front of it’s sibling, planted the same time.
We love horticultural mysteries.
Quercus phellos green meatball formQuercus phellos green meatball in front of its more typical sibling
Below are two variations on a theme…calla lilies in the garden. Here is Zone 7b, both are reliably winter hardy in the ground.
The striped-leaf selection of the winter-blooming South African native, Zantedeschia aethiopica ‘African Gold’ has looked fabulous all spring, where we have it planted in a seep, which gets full sun for 3-4 hours in the morning.
Zantedeschia ‘Picasso’ is a hybrid, created using several of the summer-flowering South African native calla lily species. Here it is in our garden in mid-June, where it gets 4-6 hours of sun daily, and the soil stays reasonably moist.
We’ve long collected conifers of the genus Chamaecyparis (false cypress). We grow all six recognized species, but the one which is best represented in horticulture is Chamaecyparis obtusa (hinoki cypress). Selections from this species range from giant 100′ specimens to tiny dwarfs.
Our favorite has to be the the dwarf Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Juniperoides’…the juniper-like hinoki cypress. Introduced from the UK around 1920, this century old selection has yet to be surpassed. Below is our 23 year-old specimen this spring, which thrives in our un-irrigated rock garden, planted among agaves, having achieved the massive stature of 2.5’ tall. This is certainly not where we usually recommend planting hinoki cypress, since many cultivars don’t thrive in western sun, especially without any sign of irrigation. This plant, however, continues to amaze us without any browning typically seen with chamaecyparis grown in the combination of sun and bone dry soil.
I wonder how many folks know, have grown, or have even seen Hypoxis hirsuta…one of our US native yellow star grasses. This little native is so odd, it’s genus was kicked out of every established plant family to which it was formerly assigned…most recently Iridaceae, prior to that, Amaryllidaceae, Leucojaceae, and and now shoved off to the side into its own family, Hypoxidaceae.
The seven species native to North American are only a fraction of the 100+ species worldwide, although Europe was completely left out when this ancient genus was distributed. Below is Hypoxis hirsuta at JLBG.
Hypoxis hirsuta
South Africa also has an abundance of Hypoxis…below is Hypoxis multiceps, in flower now at JLBG. Most of the South African species we have grown are far more showy in the garden that the US natives. Part sun seems to be ideal for all the hypoxis we’ve grown, despite where they originated.
We’ve had a longstanding love affair with the genus styrax, thanks to their amazing spring display of fragrant white bell-like flowers. Of the 130 recognized species, we have so far tried 22, of which 9 remain alive.
The first featured below is Styrax japonicus ‘Evening Light’. This amazing, black-foliage form of the typical green-leaf Styrax japonicus appeared as a seedling in Holland at the nursery of Henny Kolster. When I first saw the photo, I assumed it to have been “photoshopped”, but after growing it for several years here at JLBG, the foliage is indeed jet black. This is one of the most stunning small trees in our collection.
Styrax japonicus ‘Evening Light’
Styrax formosanus, which hails from Taiwan (Formosa) is undoubtedly the most floriferous species we’ve encounterd. Here is our garden plant this spring. For us, this generally tops out at 15′ to 20′ tall.
Styrax formosanus
Styrax americanus (Illinois south to Florida) is one of only four native US styrax species. Usually topping out around 10′ tall, this form introduced by Woodlanders Nursery has foliage with a lovely blue cast.
We’ve grown quite a few stachys (pronounced stay-kiss) through the years, but have been most impressed this spring with our newest acquisition, Stachys cretica. This fascinating dryland perennial has a wide natural range from France to Iran, where it thrives in rocky, dry, Mediterranean-like conditions. Our plants are seed-grown from Greek Plantsman, Eleftherios Dariotis, who will be speaking at our upcoming Southeastern Plant Symposium.
Stachys is one of the largest genera of plants in the sage (Lamiaceae) family, with estimates ranging from 300 to over 400 species. Stachys species are spread worldwide, being found from Europe though Asia, Africa, and into North America.
Shockingly, Stachys cretica seems virtually unknown to most gardeners, despite it puttig on a killer floral show in an unirrigated bed, and being foraged in our garden, by a huge number of bumblebees.
It only took us five attempts to figure out how to successfully grow the North American native, Stanleya pinnata. For those who haven’t met Stanleya pinnata, it’s a native woody perennial from the Westernmost States (North Dakota west to Southern California), so it really doesn’t find the rainy southeastern US to its liking. After several siting failures (learning experiences), we have finally found a location where it is thriving, a dry sloped berm in partial shade.
Stanleya was named after Lord Earl Smith-Stanley, The English 13th Earl of Derby (1775-1851) , who was quite a naturalist and president of the Linnean Society. This Lord Stanley wasn’t the only member of the Stanley family to have important items named in his honor. The NHL Ice Hockey trophy, the Stanly Cup, is named after his relative Lord Frederick Arthur Stanley (1841-1908), who was the son of Lord Edward Smith-Stanley, The 14th Earl of Derby, so it’s all in the family…Lord have mercy.
Few gardeners have probably grown the Taiwanese Rhododendron oldhamii, but this little-known species has become one of the most important azaleas in American horticulture. Here it is flowering in our garden in late spring. Then will be followed by a late summer/fall rebloom.
Rhododendron oldhamii was named for British plant explorer Richard Oldham (1837-1864). Here’s a fascinating summary of Oldham’s life/work. Despite dying at the young age of 27, Oldham made significant contributions to botany, including the rhododendron (azalea) named in his honor.
In the early 1980s, Louisiana nurseryman, Buddy Lee decided to see if the fall reblooming trait of Rhododendron oldhamii would transfer to its offspring. Indeed they did, and because of Richard Oldham his namesake azalea, and Buddy’s imagination, we now have an entire series of reblooming azaleas, known as the Encore azaleas.
In case you missed this section of the garden during spring open house, this is where we created a small vignette that comprises both bog and desert conditions in the same space. The low central area was created for pitcher plants and other bog lovers, while the higher areas to each side, are home to dryland loving plants like agaves and bearded iris. We hope to show how dramatically diverse habits can be created in a very small space. The wet space is created by installing a seep, which is nothing more than a continually dripping water line.
We caught the Nessus Sphinx moth feasting on a patch of phlox this spring. Remember that garden diversity brings more fascinating pollinators into the garden.
It’s been quite a floral extravaganza this spring in the dryland garden sections. Here are the latest of our flowering barrel cactus that have bloomed recently at JLBG. All of our cactus are growing outside without any winter protection in our zone 7b garden. The key for most is simply good soil drainage.
Coryphantha sulcataEchinocereus coccineusEchinocereus papillosus var. angusticeps Echinocereus reichenbachii var. baileyi Echinocereus stoloniferusEchinocereus x roetteriEchinopsis ancistrophora Escobaria dasyacantha SB601 Escobaria vivipara var. neomexicanaLobivia atrovirens var. ritteriLobivia haemantanthaLobivia thionanthaNotocactus apricusNotocactus floricomusNotocactus x subluteus (submammulosus x roseoluteus)Trichocereus 20-07 (‘Big Time’ x Iridescent Watermelon’)
