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Our collection from a plant with particularly good red-purple new growth where it was growing in rich soil moist soil in open woodland with a few plants of the rare Primula ovalifolia as neighbors. This is groundcover with strawberry-like stolons terminating in a plantlet which will root where it touches. Lovely thing with pale flowers above the bold foliage in early spring. The species handles the east coast as well growing in the Dronenburg-Weil garden in Maryland.

Gawen Bellflower. A fine choice for cottage gardens or your basic flower bed, this very hardy perennal will provide a refreshing and cooling display of large cup and saucer double white flowers in early to mid summer. This is a mat-forming plant so in a few years you will have an enviable stand of flower stems you can cut for dinner parties.

Ahh the beach, sun, salt, spray and....botanizing? What can we say we can't help ourselves, and locally when doing some beachside botanizing what is likely to draw you in is that perfect beach body, hairy and bigheaded, that's right we're talking Carex macrocephala, the big-headed sedge. Normal grassy sedges have edges leaves but with far more flower power than your average Carex. Rare in cultivation so sandy and well-draining if you want to be safe, but will likely tolerate a wide range of conditions like its brethren.

An exquisite and rare shrub both in cultivation and in nature. This dwarf fringetree is found only in small Florida populations and is facing possible disappearance in the wild much like it's textile fashion equivalent but at least in the case of the plant not for lack of visual appeal. This unsuspecting tree explodes head to to skirt in a riot of long-petalled white flowers dangling gracefully like sleeves at a discotheque. 

*For sale only to Washington customers*

For those who have grown ferns from spore you know that Cyrtomium are how-shall-we-say convivial, popping up where you least expect them. So here an offering for those who appreciate the unexpected joys of life. Due to their dubious origins we can't place a certain name or collection to them but the genus is notoriously indistinguishable anyway. What we can guarantee are the usual smooth evergreen sickle-pinna-ed leaves of the stalwart holly fern that mean you are equally assured of a first-rate garden plant.

A very fine cultivar with large flowers held appealingly over an especially long period. The wide open mid-orange flowers have a darker orange central stripe running down each petal which tends to grab the eye and hold it. It is always fun to watch folks cruise the Crocosmia at a steady pace only to be brought up short by Zambesi.

Smashing yellow Crocosmia with small but multitudinous flared open flowers. A good clumper with nice vigor. Often we favor the larger flowers but this puts on such a good display of a nice yellow (there are bad yellows) that it is impossible not like this one. It was among the top sellers of our Crocosmias here at the nursery last year and it is because it has that special something. There is much confusion in the trade with a half dozen different but similar cultivars and we have to confess that we are as confused as anyone. We have sold this for years as Crocosmia 'Citronella' but now think we have 'Golden Fleece' based on Goldblatt, Manning and Dunlop who state that the the true 'Citronella' gets 3'-4' tall and this is quite compact at 28"-30". 'Golden Fleece' was introduced in 1993 but no one knows who the breeder was so add murky origins to the melange of mystery.

One of the most distinctly "What is that plant?" deciduous shrubs around is this tough little mutant redstem dogwood. Intensely columnar and slow with curled leaves held close to the vertical stems. These turn a most satisfying purple in the fall. As far as flowers go, forget about it. Slow growing, our 6 footer in the garden is pushing 40 years of age.

Variegated Pagoda Dogwood. A variegated form of this alternate-leafed dogwood that is quite choice and can be seen in our shade garden. This lacks the big bracts of our native dogwood but still has true creamy scented flowers arrayed in flattened disks along the tiered branches. Superb foliage and form and is rock hardy.

Nice red-orange flowers really puts on a show later in August which comes at a time when some of the other reddish varieties have finished flowering. Named for Phillipa Browne who is a Crocosmia hybridizer in the UK. We're certain she didn't name this after herself and that a fellow nurseryman chose to honor her work in this way.

Our collection from Asia of this low growing - prostrate actually - creeping Cotoneaster. It is one we admired as it crept over a rock face along the trail and we kept going, not intending to collect seed. Looking back, we saw our friend and great plantsman Peter Cox collecting seed so we scampered back to do the same. Found in the range of C. dammeri but there are 111 species in China alone. White flowers, red fruit and evergreen.

Sea Kale. A prized vegetable of olden times, this still would be widely eaten if the leaves didn't bruise easily in transport. However, that is just a gastronomic aside because the ornamental qualities outweigh its tastiness. A seashore plant of Europe, this has ruffled blue-green leaves and white flowers.

Our selection of an exceptional seedling from a Vietnam collection. Typically green-leafed, this one has lustrous red new growth looking pretty amazing spring through fall and darned good in winter too since it is evergreen. We haven't flowered it yet but expect creamy yellow flowers in summer. Young plants, cutting propagated. A tip of the hat to our staff wit Yvonne for coming up with the perfect name.

From the Yunnan-Vietnam borderlands, this small-leafed evergreen dogwood makes an attractive tree. Flowers not seen but if anything like the red fruit when ripe, then boom-shaka-laka! Even if the flowers are not as hoped, what a gift to focus on its many attributes and the modern plague of unrealistic expectation. Gallon pots. A Far Reaches Botanical Conservancy Plant

You don't have to sell your soul to have this in your garden but once you see it, you would be more than willing. New selection from the UK that has to be Lucifer's love child. This is so much better than that old devil. Stout dark sooty stems holding deep burning red flowers with a wide flared corolla that lacks only the smell of brimstone and the wail of sinners. We do get involuntary high-pitched keening from people who see our big display plant so maybe we're just missing the brimstone. Quite difficult to come by, these are single large corms we would typically put into a gallon pot for sale here at the nursery.

Rare Campanula relative from Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet. This has a perennial carrot-like root and in mid spring, the new growth emerges getting 12"-18" tall and tipped by pale blue bells with a darker blue base. We collect Codonopsis every time we see them in Asia because we love them. Musky foliage if bruised.

Non-spiny, non-seeding ornamental thistle similar to that favorite of European designers and English cottage gardeners, Cirsium rivulare 'Atropurpureum', this has the typically red flowers tempered by a bit of magenta. A beautiful plant with a misleading name because blue it ain't but we don't hold that against it as we are just happy to be growing it!

Cute little evergreen small-scale groundcover from moist shaded habitats in China. We saw this growing in very moist shade in deep moss over rocks which carried seepage from the summit of Wumeng Shan. Interesting clusters of yellow flowers and has proven perfectly hardy for us.

Whorled Stoneroot. A pretty sweet Southeastern woodland wildflower whose uppermost two pairs of broad leaves are so close together you would think they were held in a whorled arrangement rather than opposite. Add in its woody rhizome and you have the origins of its common name. The spike of peachy-cream flowers is both lovely and rich in detail. I gallon size.

A hybrid of Clematis marata and C. marmoria from Graham Hutchins of the famed County Park Nursery in New Zealand. This fairly tender little evergreen creeper has early spring female flowers of greenish-white which are strongly scented of citrus. Perfect little container plant to overwinter in the cool greenhouse or outside in mild areas.