Chile

The only plant we grow in the Berberidopsidaceae and after typing this, thank god. One of the choicest woodland plants and a connoisseur climber for mild sheltered gardens. A well-grown Berberidopsis in your garden makes you a Garden Queen (regardless of gender). Evergreen, late summer deep coral flowers.

Chilean Guava. Our mama plant is loaded with fruit in the greenhouse right now and after eating some, we're questioning why we are selling any instead of keeping them to lavish ourselves in personal extravagance. If we were just two miles down the road by the shore we would grow these outside but here in the relative Siberia of the Quimper Peninsula Steppe, we dasn't take the chance. One of the perfect evergreen shrubs for mild climates, this has shiny aromatic leaves giving olfactory testimony to its inclusion in the Myrtle family. Nice white flowers followed by ruby flavorful fruit the size of average Blueberries and all on a broadly columnar plant to 8' tall. If this was hardier, it would be ubiquitous. As it is, it is worth coddling in cooler climes and personally we are going to throw down some Chilean Guava on our foodie friends come Christmas. The best thing about bringing an Ugni dish to Christmas dinner? It'll be the best Ugni anyone has ever had. Neo in The Matrix, not in black but in Chef white, holding a plate of Ugni a la Far Reaches in one hand and reaching out, beckoning "Bring it, foodies" with the other. Oh yeah, so doing the Ugni.

Amazing Chilean Lobelia that is perfectly hardy here if you mulch it during nasty cold snaps. This is one of those perennials that when you see it grown well and you aren't familiar with it, has an almost concussive visual impact. Even when you do know it well, it still seems like a freak of nature it is so beautiful.This gets multiple stalks to 7' high with spires of tubular red flowers for 6-8 weeks which beckon hummingbirds from afar. Highly dramatic and surprisingly easy given good drainage. This grows in sandy areas in Chile so drainage is key. We grow ours in raised beds and mulched with dairy manure as they have a healthy appetite. In late fall, we cut up the stalks and lay them over the crown and usually toss some more cow poo over that as we want to keep frost from the crown plus it can make growth early which can get frosted so the mulch helps. We get ours through short periods of low teens with no problem. This is surely one of the finest of the larger perennials.

A Chilean collection of a very large form of this showy species. You can correctly infer that since this is larger, it is showier! Four foot tall or more flower stems arise from the bold basal rosettes of ruffled rounded leaves to display in grand fashion the wands of white-throated pink flowers. If size is important to you and if we are all being honest, it is, then this is the Francoa to which all others must be measured and found lacking. Mild gardens here.

Quite the uncommon small evergreen tree to large shrub that has tiny little red flowers cladding the stems which individually are a bit of nothing but in their multitudes are really kind of fun. Native to Argentina through Chile down into windy Patagonia, this has not been trialed much here but is growing at the Arboretum in Seattle. Zone 8. Previously received as Maytenus chubatensis and offered as such but finally plowed through some South America floras and wait a minute - it's Maytenus magellanica! We down widdat since it is actually nicer and hardier.

One of those plants that turns you to jelly when you see it blooming. We saw this grown to perfection at the Charlton-Sale garden in North Vancouver BC where it had grown over a stump in the woodland and crept over to the fissured bark of a nearby Douglas fir and was creeping up the furrows with over-sized red-pink trumpets of flowers which left us stricken dumb in the wilderness. Fortunately it was right on the path and we could see the house and Charlie was nearby, so we were able to stumble along muttering "Asteranthera - must have Asteranthera" in relative safety until our wits returned. Now we are haunted by what other treasures we might have missed along the way while we were blinded by beauty. This Chilean and Argentinian gesneriad demands a cool, humid, acidic, moist, somewhat shaded and relatively mild situation to thrive. If you have these conditions, then this an automatic add to cart. A small-leafed evergreen groundcover which will climb tightly appressed over or up boulders or logs. Given time and proper conditions, it will climb up tree trunks or shaded brick walls to 10' or bit more and leave you steeped in wonder when it flowers..

For most of us, this is a good container plant to lug in for the winter but if you have that garden which only gets light frosts or that microclimate we would kill for, then this is a goody. Native to Chile, this is in the Solanaceae and will become a 4'-6' evergreen shrub with drooping and narrowly tubular yellow flowers with long exserted stamens. The foliage is a bit unpleasant when crushed - and only then - which makes us think it will be deer proof. Good for a sunny position and was given the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society.

Those dang taxonimists submerged our beloved Bolax glebaria into this newfangled genus and it jes' turns us into a couple of ornery ol' cusses. Oh well, a name is but an artificial convention that is nowhere near what the plant calls itself. Tight little hummock former for the rock garden.

We are very fond of this plant from Chile where it can scramble up into trees quite a ways and the branchlets poking out into the sun are studded with glowing brick orange 1.5" trumpets. We've also seen it kept as a loose mound in full sun literally covered in flowers. Evergreen.

There is really nothing else like this plant from the Chilean Andes with its cobwebby silver foliage topped in summer by 8"-12" stems bearing small purple lady slipper flowers. You're not microdosing - it's for real. This is surprisingly hardy to zone 6 especially given snow cover but in our winters, good drainage is key as months of cold soggy soil is anathema. Easy given consistent water in good drainage.

This a bigger version of the little B. penna-marina ssp. alpina commonly found in nurseries. We never see this offered which is just a shame since it is a great fern. Well, not such a shame since a little exclusivity never hurts. This makes a dense groundcover of evergreen foliage.