Hybrid

A hybrid Bergenia from the breeding work of Rosemarie Eskuche in Germany. 'David' has smallish leaves which stand quite upright taking on good color in the winter. Being smaller and upright lends itself to containers or the rock garden. Intense pink flowers on stems to 16" in spring are impossible to ignore unless of course you decorate with plastic flamingos.

A hybrid out of New Zealand that is widely regarded as one of the best. A hardier deciduous species with big heads of purple-violet flowers with each petal boasting a darker central stripe. This is a performer which will not disappoint. This can be grown in zone 7 if deeply mulched for the winter. We typically mulch all of our Agapanthus just to be on the safe side as we can get cold here.

One of two similar but subtly different chance seedlings in our garden thanks to the tireless hybridization efforts of our various bee species. Apparently they visited the nursery and purloined pollen from 'Dixter Pink' or 'Cottage Apricot' and placed it on our Chrysanthemum yezoense - awesome! Why didn't we think of that? Softly pale pink flowers with petals flat to slightly reflexed.

This is a fine selection quite comparable to "Back in Black" but a bit more compact in stature aspiring to attain 3' in height. This makes it much more workable for the front of the bed or as a container element. Dark stems holding dark blue-purple flowers in late summer. Mulch if very cold but has been fine here in the Puget Sound area.

Hybrid seedling that came up in OSU Grevillea researcher Neil Bell's garden at the base of his Grevillea victoriae so carries a preponderance of the all the good traits of the parent. What are those good traits, you say? Hardiness, showy reddish flowers in summer, evergreen, tough, hummingbirds love it, deer hate it. Grow dryish and lean.

This is one hell of a plant. Flower stalks to 5 feet tall with admittedly small heads of flowers but the individual florets are large and quite long. These drooping pendants are the color you dream about in Agapanthus - a deep and dark smoking blue-black that you can look at eye to eye. Awesome is so overused but if you put effin' in front, it works with this plant.

Chunky seed-grown plants from the fair and white-flowered 'Guinevere'. We presume that some at least will resemble the desirable parent (Guinevere 2.0?) while the rest will explore floral realms yet unknown. A 1 in 36 roll of the Fairy Wandflower dice that could come up boxcars, or at worst, a solid garden performer.

Among our thousands of plant accessions, tall bearded iris are represented by just a single plant - Iris 'Kent Pride'. This outlier in our collections strategy is sited in one of the choicest spots in the dry garden because it is a stunner. Rich chestnut-red standards with the same overlaid on yellow around a white blaze on the falls - so good! An enduring gift to us from one of the PNW's best plant minds, Jim Fox, who acquired this at Beth Chatto's nursery in England and which we finally have enough to spare a few. It will be some years before we offer it again so dither not. Fresh divisions potted in gallons.

A plant that has proved its worth over the years performing beautifully at the Denver Botanic Garden handling not only summer heat but winter cold. A hybrid which gets to just 18" tall or a tad more with lots of rich purple flowers for nearly 2 months in early summer. Thanks to Ian of Desert Northwest for turning us on to this goodie.

Another exceptional introduction from the masters of their craft at Aberconwy Nursery in Wales. This red-flowered, mossy saxifage is one we were smitten by - along with literally every other plant - when we visited this Mecca for the alpine plant enthusiast. We visited Aberconwy and Bodnant in March and had to breathe into our paper lunch bags to keep from passing out.

Fabulous hybrid Hepatica that in time will form mats of great lobed foliage with loads of light medium blue flowers in early spring. A durable plant with few if any faults. Great with Ranunculus ficaria and Hellebores.

Heyrick Greatorix hybridized Galanthus plicatus with G. nivalis 'Flore Pleno' and selected several outstanding double seedlings to name and these are part of the group known as the Greatorix Doubles. 'Dionysus' is one of the earliest of these to flower and and has large white flowers with petals parted to show the well-marked green inner perianth with its packed green inner petals with their white picotee. An excellent one for the garden both in persistence and increase. And might I say right here that thank the gods that Heyrick Greatorix did some excellent Galanthus hybridizing so that future generations might have the benefit of not only enjoying his snowdrops but also his name. Hopefully some of you with children pending might set aside the names of reality tv stars (research shows that these are the popular names) in favor of a name that has and will stand the test of time. While I might not legally change my name Heyrick Greatorix, a tattoo is not out of the question.

Evening Glow'. Sturdy German hybrid which excels in all areas of foliage, flower and garden worthiness. Good rich glossy green foliage colors up very well in winter especially given exposure to sun. The March and April flowers are a strong pink with an infusion of magenta which glam rocks Spring's murmuring pastels.

One of the very good blue flowered hybrids combining the best traits of Corydalis flexuosa with those of C. elata. We were in China in 2006 and saw both species in a single day in the Wolong Panda area and these hybrids hold a special appeal to us. In the Poppy family, this requires light to bright shade and moist soil where it will make a nice patch. Z5-8.

These are seed-grown from our plant of 'Hakure' which is often seen as 'Hakuree'. The parent plant was bred and selected by Hiroshi Hayakama in Japan in the early 90's who chose this for its floriferous display of white flowers just touched with fleeting lavender and sporting twisted tepals. Our seed-grown progeny will vary from deep purple to white but all will be good. 18"-30" tall. Don't call this 'Hakure' as each plant is unique individual.

From our breeding work with Podophyllum, comes a very vigorous hybrid between a good form of pleianthum and a robust delavayi hybrid. These have large, rather olive-green leaves touched in mottled light bronze especially when young and has red flowers that are well-displayed. This is not flamboyant but has a redoubtable solemnity of purpose and inherent courtliness which has earned our respect.

Pretty amazing mum that makes an extremely dense mound of its own accord and then smothers itself in small white flowers with a yellow button in the fall. The green leaves are made all the more attractive by the silvery undersides. We showed this to a couple of visiting Aussies who have the premier rare perennial nursery Down Under "Do you have to pinch this to have it look like this? No? Well, that's a Criahkuh (Cracker) of a plant!". Convict bloodlines aside, these boys knew a good a plant when they saw it.

These Sanguisorba arose as self-sown seedlings from our sales area where we have had various species and selections for sale. We are using the catch-all "hybrids" because the bees adore the pink to red conical flowers and they were visiting all of them! Customers were always asking if we had the plant blooming under the tables - now we do.

This is a hybrid named by Sean Hogan which was found at the Ruth Bancroft gardens and is a suspected cross between the creeping Ficus pumila and the big edible fig, Ficus carica. It does seem to be perfectly intermediate. A rambler/scrambler for a sunny spot good for winding through shrubs. Zone 8, tiny figs.

A cracking bicolored Lily of the Nile out of a breeding program in South Africa where this one seedling out of hundreds exhibited excellent white flowers with a blue base. These are held in 6"-8" umbels on stems to nearly 4' tall! Maybe the best thing is that is deciduous and hardy going to zone 7b with a good mulch.