New & Restocked

This species is known as the "Silky Camellia" and while not a camellia it is as valuable and coveted as silk and in many ways as finicky to produce. A fine trader indeed is the one willing to travel the route by which seed can be procured, and our botanical Marco Polo in this case is the Stewartia king of Georgia, Jack Johnston. You'll need a bit of woodland shade in your Xanadu and careful handling as these don't like root disturbance but when the large white blossoms embossed with a center of deep purple blue-anthered stamens gets going your garden will become stately pleasure dome the envy of which will spread across continents.

Thanks to Will Johnson for sharing pictures from the parent plants in Jack's garden!

For once the embarrassingly long succession of names appended to this plant before arriving on what we now believe to be the correct one happened before we broadcast them online. Unfortunately that means you all have been kept waiting for far too long! All the time we were haunted by Flora of China keys for Lysimachia, Pseudolysimachion, and Veronicastrum these were gracefully waving their long tails of lavender-blue flowers out in the garden tantalizing. Very similar in appearance to our North American Veronicastrums but with longer and slightly larger flowers in the aforementioned blue-to-purple tones. Seemingly new to cultivation outside of China!

A royal fern whose lineage through fern royalty was unspoilt until it graced our worn proletariat hands. The original plant of this form with tripinnate leaves, meaning one extra degree of division resulting in a feathery look, was found in Kerry, Ireland but subsequently lost to cultivation. 90 years later British pterido-maniac Martin Rickard chanced upon another in a ditch in that same county. From there it passed to local fern celebrity Sue Olsen and through her Hardy Fern Foundation to the Elisabeth Miller garden where its current caretaker Richie Steffen graciously bestowed upon me one single frond from which come all of these spore-grown plants. Don't worry if the fronds are not yet fully feathered, its a trait that develops and strengthens with age.

These are seedlings from our much-coveted tree on our border which is a superior selection introduced by the Univeristy of British Columbia. The tree is apomictic which means the seeds are gentically identical to the parent. Blue-green leaves, white flowers and stunning pink fruit in summer.

We grow an unreasonable amount of different Ophiopogon or mondo grass species and varieties. Unreasonable because they mostly just fuse together into one globular grassy ball in the mind due to their lack of distinguishing characters. The forbidden blue jelly beans of this particular collection are vivid as ever. Wild collected umbraticola is good enough already but if that's what this is then it is a particularly fine form with a large profusion of both flowers and fruits, with the latter being on the larger side of those we have encountered. Being called "dwarf" must have given these a Napoleon complex that led them to excel in other areas...

Perhaps the most widely grown species of this genus rarely seen in the Northern hemisphere but much beloved by those in the know. This is due to its history of cultivation as an edible substitute to taters, but having seen the tubers myself I think I'll be stickin' to spuds. Also perhaps one of the hardier members with some making claims all the way down to 7b. However the range is large and varied in elevation, this Guatemalan collection as of yet remains untrialled. Ours go winter-dormant in the greenhouses which makes it a good candidate for pot culture anyway, coming out in the warmer months to twine its way upwards until it explodes into a glorious array of bright pink, lime throated flowers. 

Ahh just another native Saxifragaceae you say, and shove it under the table where you don't have to look at it too often. That is until, one day you see emerging from the Marianas trench of the greenhouse, the yellow bristling maws from a pack of some benthic sea monsters. On second glance these resolve into the intricately grotesque little spires of flowers from this unassuming creeping herb. "We gotta propagate this" quickly follows in your internal monologue and you note this moment for future sales purposes. A stoloniferous lover of moist shade.