In the “in case you missed it”, this clever gag gift for the plant lover in your life has appeared on-line just in time for the holidays. Not sure what else we can say, other than watch for fire ants and chiggers.
I fell in love with the Arizona/Mexico native ornamental grass, Muhlenbergia dumosa when the the late JC Raulston first brought it back from Yucca Do Nursery in 1992. This odd member of the genus muhlenbergia resembles a clumping bamboo unlike other members of the genus. For those non-connoisseurs of Latin, dumosa means “bushy”.
JC touted this Yucca Do collection from Northern Mexico as the most amazing ornamental grass he had ever encountered. JC distributed it to nurserymen, who introduced it into the trade, only to find out that it wasn’t winter hardy in most of North Carolina.
On a visit to the South Carolina Botanical Garden last year, we were shocked to see Muhlenbergia dumosa growing happily in their desert garden. It turned out that they were growing a new clone, collected from a higher elevation in Arizona, that had proved reliable in their Zone 7b climate. We were gifted a start of Mulhlenbergia dumosa ‘Patagonia’, which now resides in a couple of locations at JLBG. We’re very excited, and now look forward to having a cold winter to fully test its winter hardiness.
Late summer and fall are a great time to enjoy the plumes of our US native ornamental grass, Panicum virgatum. Here are two photos from the garden this week. The first is one of my favorites, the giant Panicum ‘Cloud 9’…an introduction from Maryland’s defunct Bluemount Nursery. Below this is a new dwarf, blue-foliage introduction for 2022, from Walters Gardens, Panicum ‘Niagara Falls’. It has proven exceptional in our trials and will appear in the January Plant Delights Nursery catalog.
This amazing selection of pampas grass is looking particularly stunning at JLBG this summer. This plant has had quite a few false starts in commerce, but hopefully it’s getting a bit closer to being commercially available. We love its compact nature, although it does reach 7′ in height and 10′ wide.
Arundo donax ‘Peppermint Stick’ is looking quite gorgeous in the garden this summer, although you will need a rather large space in which to grow it. I’ve always felt this would be fantastic on large commercial landscape projects. Sadly, we see this pop up on a few poorly-researched lists of invasive plants, which would be quite difficult since it neither runs or produces viable seed in cultivation.
Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hush Puppy’ is a very vigorous fountain grass from the breeding program of Wayne Hanna at the University of Georgia, the result of their fountain grass sterilization program. Other introductions from this program include ‘Cayenne’, ‘Etouffee’, and ‘Jambalaya’.
In the garden Pennisetum ‘Hush Puppy’ forms a 3′ tall x 4′ wide clump that produces a succession of new plumes from early/mid-July (NC), and continuing to fall…an extended flowering season due to a lack of seed production.
Cortaderia selloana ‘Silver Fountain’ is one of those amazing plants that we offered through Plant Delights Nursery many years ago (1999, 2000), but it continues to impress in the garden, which makes us wonder if we should propagate and offer it again. Here is our 20 year old clump in the garden this week. Thoughts?
Arundo donax ‘Golden Chains’ is looking quite nice in the garden this month. We love this selection of the giant ornamental grass that’s used for making reeds for wind instruments. Arundo ‘Gold Chains’ is much less vigorous than the the typical species, and much easier to fit into smaller gardens. Here’ we’re growing it as a marginal aquatic, where it thrives as well as it does in typical to dry garden soils.
Here are some seed and seedpods from the gardens and the greenhouses today.
Here are some ornamental seed pods from the gardens this week.
More ornamental seed pods from the garden.
Here are some decorative seed pods from the garden this week.
