Geranium

A free-flowering, lower carpeting form of this choice species that is ideal in the rock garden and one we acquired from our friends at Rumbling Bridge Nursery in Scotland. This Croatian native has a tidy personna, showy mauve-pink flowers and small leaves coloring well in winter. When we say carpeting, it's more of a place mat.

A white flowered variant of this familiar Geranium whose flowers are backed by a green calyx rather than pink which adds to its overall indispensable lightness of being. The paler than normal green leaves accentuate this and makes this valuable for brightening a somber corner or tempering hotter colors. This was found on Mt Olympus in Greece on a Ness Botanic Garden Expedition and introduced by the same. We should have thought more about our name - 'White-Far' 'Far White' 'White Reach' 'Reach White' just doesn't get it - those Brits one-up us on plants again - buggers! This will handle dry shade to mostly sun and is nearly a mythic plant for those tough places and somehow thrives under the regime of absentee gardening.

Absolute rock hardy jewel from Lebanon and Syria. Well. it's rock hardy here anyway - we know that means something entirely different in Minot. This is perfect for our area as it is winter growing and summer dormant so our Mediterranean dry summers feels a lot like home to it. Surprisingly, it has been very tolerant of being watered all the time while dormant so it is more cosmopolitan than one might guess its geography. Blooms in late spring with lots of lavender-blue flowers on stems up to 18" and after flowering it disappears until Fall. Not often available and we have the inimitable John Flintoff to thank for sharing this with us.

Our collection from the the summit of Guizhou Province's highest mountain in the southern Wumengshan. This was an area of severe deforestation and grazing but we secured 5 seeds of this very nice pink flowered species hiding at the edge of a boulder in the cropped turf and after propagation, can now offer this rare and possibly new to cultivation beauty. We have been thrilled with the performance of this in our garden where it grows at the foot of a large Baptisia where it wends it way through the stems to 3' tall and fronts the Baptisia with a skirt of pink flowers for going on three months. It is actually giving the Baptisia a bit of a complex because the Baptisia flowers for about a week and takes up a lot of space while meantime the Geranium is just a little energizer bunny.

We acquired this incredibly tough, tuberous, summer dormant Geranium in the 80's from East Lambrook in southern England which was home to Margery Fish and the original English Cottage Garden. Provenance alone is merit enough but good lavender blue flowers and drought tolerance carries the day.

Our collection from Yunnan of this intriguing hardy Geranium. Nice foliage faintly mottled in spring and copious sprays of small pink flowers infused with lavender. The petals are reflexed strongly back like the flowers of a Dodecatheon and the nose of the flower is whiskered in white..