Himalayas

Sometimes simple is best, shocking coming from this bastion of maximalism and specialization we know, but its hard not to love an approachable friendly face in an intimidating crowd. This species is that friendly face for the at-times daunting world of alpine and rock gardening, adaptable and charismatic with it's primula-like flowers. This little Euro delicacy comes from the legendary Aberconwy nursery, one of two selections bred to combine the compact habit of the white-flowered 'Doksa' with the usual bright pink form. This one favors saturation of color over extreme dwarfness but is still quite compact. A little specialist and a lot cute, a welcome addition for the beginner and the erudite expert.

These are seed-grown plants from a fantastic rich purple form of the Blue Poppy shared with us by Merrill Jensen of the Jensen-Olson Arboretum in Alaska where these magical plants grow like Matanuska cabbages. This is a very choice offering. We've not seen this before and the pedigree remains a grandis mystery, so to speak! These could vary from seed but we hope not and be sure to save seed after flowering as you will want a drift of these! Only for cool to cold climates, with no warm humid evenings.

Tall Jack in the Pulpit. These grow into big boys with a large green flower and distinctive vertical spadix held well above the foliage. This merits that overused word of awesome especially when it gets 5' tall and you are eye-to-eye with that intriguing flower. The showy brilliant red fruit cluster is most welcome in early fall.

Chinese version of this species which gets into the Himalaya as we've seen in Arunachal Pradesh. Softly banded in mocha as the new green leaves emerge, the white flowers show nicely below the expanding leaves. Late summer, round orange fruit appears. A different collection from what we've offered previously.

Neat species widely distributed from Thailand to China and into the Himalaya to Bhutan. This has stout stems that can reach 4' on old large bulbs with many leaflets arrayed like the spokes of an umbrella. Large green flowers often tinged with purple followed by red fruit. With such a broad range, there is variation in the species but a constant seems to be consistently good growers in the garden. Ours often don't appear above ground until early June so be patient! These are medium-sized bulbs and yes, we agree with you that we should have these sized by centimeters.

An easy plant for the rock garden or well-drained front of the border. This doesn't require much beyond the basics and yet on this meager fare of occasional watering it will bloom most of the summer and well into fall. To ask for more would be simply bad form. Mat forming with gray-green lightly hirsute rosettes with umbells of white flowers with small green turning pink eyes.

We're wild about Roscoeas which we think gives you the floral abandon and exotic appeal of an orchid with a fraction of the cost and difficulty. One of the hardy ginger clan from the Indian Himalaya. These like a woodsy soil that drains yet stays moist. Easy and rewarding.

A cool tolerant species from the Himalaya, we keep this in our 40F greenhouse over the winter and it seems to like it. We're not traditional orchid growers as a rule but this has been super-easy, even in pots like everything else here. These are non-flowering divisions in gallon pots and could and should bloom next year. White flowers are of good size.

A good form of this Chinese Jack in the Pulpit from plantsman Darrell Probst which sports the eye-catching and very elegant white-striped purple flowers typical of the species but here with the added ornament of dark stems rather than green.  This used to be known as var. liubaense, for the lack of ciliate hairs on the spathe rim but this is a minor distinction and is no longer recognized.  An excellent increaser by offsets, resulting in a proper colony over time.

Seldom offered species and one we had the privilege to see in a very remote area in western Arunachal Pradesh in 2003. Well, Sue saw it as Kelly was confined to bed violently ill and missing this remains one of his great regrets. This originated from friend and plant legend Peter Cox of Glendoick. Pink to white flowers.

This is a pretty interesting selection of climbing hydrangea we received from the intrepid plant hunting duo of Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones of Crug Farm Nursery in Wales. They collected this on a plant hunting trip to Sikkim and found this in the forest near the town of Yuksom. This has the typical small coral-green lacecap flowers and will self-adhere to a wall or tree-trunk as do the others but what sets this selection apart is the generally evergreen leaves which turn purple in the winter. Admittedly, Crug is in a mild portion of Wales which helps with the evergreen nature but what a nice bit of unexpected ornament. This was not collected at a particularly high elevation and we have no idea how hardy this will prove to be but for that sheltered spot in need of winter interest, gotta try it! Especially if grown on a wall, hardiness should be greatly improved and we expect this to be good to zone 7 anyway.

One of the most satisfying and reliable of the hardy Gingers. We've grown this Nepalese beauty for years now and it always blooms in mid to late summer with flowers of the most gentle orange. This is a good increaser in moist loose soil and looks marvelous in half sun or bright shade. This does not need a long warm Fall to flower but relishes our cool pseudosummers here in the Puget Sound. We mulch ours in the fall to keep frost for reaching the rhizome and basically other than that we just water and feed it. Very low care.

We've sold this before as the pink form of baileyi but now have the correct name. These are lovely 4-petaled flowers of a distinctive mauve pink and has proved to be a good perennial form. While it is in the Poppy family, it hates the sun and dry. Give this a moist well-drained rich soil in bright shade to morning sun. Our sympathies if you live where this cannot be grown, which is about anywhere it gets hot and/or humid in the summer.

Thank gods for Steve Hootman of the Rhododendron Species Botanic Garden who is a champion of the lesser Ericads otherwise we would be blissfully unaware that so many necessary plants such as this existed and this rare epiphytic Vaccinium is just such a plant. Fortunately Steve did not assess a leech surcharge appended to each sale of this plant otherwise we would be in serious trouble as they were legion in the Salween and his stories of his boots squishing as if filled with water from the monsoon rains only to find that upon removal of the boots that the sloshing was not so much water as it was blood which poured red from the weeping leech bites. Eighteen bucks starts to sound pretty reasonable don't you think? Very cute little epiphyte with small rounded cupped leaves and wee white flowers. This is going to be a source of no small pleasure in zone 8 where it will be happy growing in a container creeping in a rotting log or mossy rock in part shade. We grow ours in a cool greenhouse kept just at or above freezing and has been easy as pie. Not the showiest in the genus but isn't high maintenance or prone to drama. This has an unassuming beauty that only generations of attention to understated detail can achieve and there is not a thing we would change about this except perhaps that occasional nightmare concerning leeches.

A selection by the late plantsman and plant hunter Michael Wickenden of Cally Gardens from his collection in the Mishmi Hills of India. Aptly named for the late summer display of small deep red-pink flowers, these are nicely displayed over the broadly rounded leaves, which when given enough sun, take on purple coloring.

These are robust plants from seed collected by Chris Chadwell in northern India in 2012. Chris is extremely knowledgeable on the flora of Nepal, Kashmir and northwest India having done nearly 30 extensive botanical expeditions to those areas. This species is particularly interesting to us, as not only is it perfectly hardy for us in our gardens but it extends the geography in our accessions: it joins our shorter-stature 2003 collection from near eastern Bhutan, along with our 2006 collection from Sichuan. We like geeking out on a species and when we can observe the various expressions of morphology as influenced by the diversity of its range, it really doesn't get much better for us. Safe to say we get a "botanical flush". Anyway, this hardy true ginger relative is good down to zone 7b with enough mulch for short durations to single digits and happy in bright shade to mostly sun. This species blooms reliably for us every year outside and makes us very happy in October with its open spires of white crane fly flowers highlighted by salmon-pink working parts. Moist with drainage.

Blackberry Lily. Our collection of this extremely widespread Asian species which not only has attractive deep orange flowers that are overlaid in a plethora of red spots but also the seed is curiously attractive looking for all the world like a large blackberry. This has wide application in traditional Chinese medicine and our collection is likely an escapee from the local mountain village.

A true Ginger relative, this is a vigorous and hardy hybrid between R. auriculata and R. cautleyoides and is a wonderful fusing of all that is good in both parents unlike me who got the short round gene. Stout tanned foliage with large variably purple streaked flowers in shades of cream.

One of the showiest in this genus of vining Bellflowers. Large purple-blue flowers with a dark ring - sometimes pure white - quickens our pulses in either expression. Recently reduced from species status, grey-wilsonii has been retained as a geographic race of the species convolvulacea based on larger leaves and flowers.

This flamboyant Blueberry relative is almost hardy in our area but is an easy and dramatic attention-getter in a pot. We keep ours in the cool greenhouse over winter or if you are annoyingly mild like West Seattle, just bring in during the rare hard freeze. The 1" red tubular flowers marked in distinctive pale chevrons are favored by our resident hummingbirds and we all snack on the lightly sweet pale lavender fruit. This is an epiphytic species from the foothills of the Himalaya with arching pendulous stems clad in small evergreen leaves. We sold our nearly 30 year old stock plant as there are offers that you can't refuse but we still pine and wonder how our priorities became so skewed. But we took cuttings and so on it goes.