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1703 products
1703 products
Our collection from a plant with particularly good red-purple new growth where it was growing in rich soil moist soil in open woodland with a few plants of the rare Primula ovalifolia as neighbors. This is groundcover with strawberry-like stolons terminating in a plantlet which will root where it touches. Lovely thing with pale flowers above the bold foliage in early spring. The species handles the east coast as well growing in the Dronenburg-Weil garden in Maryland.
Tender South American shrubby succulent making a 3'x4' mound of thin stems with small fleshy leaves Flowers unknown and we are perfectly willing to accept that this might well be a different genus entirely! Pairs well with cactus, bromeliads and xeric shrubs. Let us know what it looks like when it flowers! A Far Reaches Botanical Conservancy Offering.
Fine Buckwheat from seed collected in Kern Co. CA at 7830'. This population is one of the most compact forms of this variety with very small, gray-white leaves on a low mat that can eventually get 2' across. The flower stems can be 16" tall, and unlike its pom-pom flowered kin, the white to pale pink flowers are ranked along the stem to nice effect. Dryish mineral soil zones 5-8.
A Dan Hinkley collection from Mt Emei in China's Sichuan Province and touted as being hardy to Z7 but only by those in serious zonal denial. That said, a customer told us that he mulches his deeply and it has survived our worst winters so there is a clue - mulch!. An attractive plant with late season pink flowers and well worth trying in a sheltered spot.
Native to the Caucasus and northern Iran where hardline clerics have been known to set aside fiery rhetoric while getting dirty bedding out plants of Eryngium caucasicum at their villas in the Elburz Mts. The Eryngium flowers are a natural cleric mellowing agent making them feel like the Ayatollah of Sea Hollyola. Small blueish flowers in quantity. Hope this isn't our unintentional Salman Rushdie moment.
A certain innocent muscularity is displayed in these gently questing tendrils carrying flowers whose familiarity is overshadowed by their startling size. Intricate blue and white flowers, steeped in Christian symbolism, are twice the normal size. Average soil, good drainage, a vine of distinction.
Perhaps the best of the Veratrum species in flower with tall, dark, and handsome spires of rich maroon flowers. If I was a pollinator this would be the first flower I would ask to dance. These are seedlings off a potential hybrid that we got from Ardfearn nursery, the parents are a bit taller than the usual relatively diminutive formosanum while maintaining the dark purple flowers. Highly desirable if the genetics stay strong but with seed you never know for sure, but as the radio ads always say "Investing involves the risk of loss".
Silver Feather Grass is one of the most graceful and curious of all perennial grasses. From a low clump, spectacular flower spikes rise to 30" unfurling curled streamers that jive in the breeze. These corkscrew feathers fly off carrying a single long, weighted seed which uses the wind to self-drill itself into the ground. Drought tolerant and kinetic.
Young plants from our seed collection in Switzerland a couple summers ago while hiking the 120 mile High Pass Route. Nothing like fresh snow in late August on the crazy narrow goat track path above a dizzying drop on the highest pass to make you wail for mama. Kelly wailed, Sue was fine. A few extra plants from planting out. Showy filamentous purplish flowers.
Poet's or Alexandrian Laurel. Panache oozes from the phylloclades of this haute shade shrub. Before you get nervous, phylloclades are leaf-like organs of modified stem tissue as this nonpareil evergreen is so far beyond the cutting edge that true leaves are just so yesterday. Small green flowers to delight a microscopist, showy red berries in fall. Imagine wearing this crown of laurel in ancient Greece after winning the marathon. I can visualize the wearing but am having a bit of difficulty focusing on the running part. Now if it was a weeding marathon, I would have to say, let's get it on! These aren't big plants that you will get by any means as they are slow to go but we have gotten the painfully slow beginning out of the way so it is all good from here. You can't go unless you start.
Our collection of this interesting Solomon's Seal from the Cangshan in Yunnan way back in 1997 when we were with Kunming Botanic Garden. This has bamboo-like new growth which is quite striking and tiers of verticillate lanceolate leaves on stems to 6' gives great texture. The leaf axils are crowded with small pale flowers followed by orange-red fruit in the Fall. Tolerant of our cool full sun and part sun is ideal.
Rare Campanula relative from Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet. This has a perennial carrot-like root and in mid spring, the new growth emerges getting 12"-18" tall and tipped by pale blue bells with a darker blue base. We collect Codonopsis every time we see them in Asia because we love them. Musky foliage if bruised.
A hardy Gladiolus that could win over that segment of gardeners who just don't like glads but we suspect they would be glad to grow this. Happy even. Some verging on ecstatic. Smaller statured in leaf and flower, this will make nice clumps with flowers of a clear, soft creamery-butter yellow. Mulch if winter is bitter.
A very dwarf species Coral Bells with tubby little peachy white flowers on short stems. Ideal rockery or rock garden plant. Not often offered and overshadowed by its lab rat tissue culture Frankenbrethren, we like this a lot and prefer the timeless design nuances of evolutionary millenia over the hottest newest thing until almost immediately the hotter newer thing comes along and you are stuck with last season's big whoop. Sue has grown this same clone for 30 years between Vermont and Port Townsend.
A woody species peony we first saw in Yunnan in 1997 growing in the open woodland surrounding the alluvial plain of the Ganghoba valley with Dipelta, Rodgersia and Arisaema. This will get 4'-6' tall with nicely dissected foliage and the small but intense flowers on these young, seed-grown plants will likely be red although orange is possible as we have both and bees will be bees.
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.
A handsome clone from the late J.C. Raulston which we have propagated by cuttings. Broad and glossy green leaves 2" wide by nearly 4" long are most attractive in new growth being a fine plum color. This curious genus is notable for the fruit seemingly set on the midrib of the upper leaf surface which won't happen with this clone as it is male. The small insignificant flowers do little more than further damage the fragile male ego but if you are lucky enough to have a female clone nearby, then you can expect purplish black drupes to appear on the leaf blade. Fascinating and attractive evergreen shrub to 6'-8' and hardy to zone 6.
Grown from seed given to us by xeric, steppe and rock garden guru, Panayoti Kelaidis of Denver Botanic Garden. Brilliant plantsman who, if you gave him an hour lead time, would be conversant in aquatic plants native to Lake Malawi and the nearby Great Rift Valley. This Central Asian species grows natively on rocky, sandy slopes and in the garden, is quite drought tolerant. Thrives in Denver, this will get 3'-4'+ with pink flowers in summer.
No shipping to Maryland. Non-spiny, non-seeding ornamental thistle similar to that favorite of European designers and English cottage gardeners, Cirsium rivulare 'Atropurpureum', this has the typically red flowers tempered by a bit of magenta. A beautiful plant with a misleading name because blue it ain't but we don't hold that against it as we are just happy to be growing it!
A collection from China of this surpirisingly hardy gesneriad whose identity remains a mystery. This was growing on a mountain summit in a shaded area with hard limestone outcrops coated in thick moss which proved ideal conditions for this little gem. Tubular yellow flowers are a delight and has handled 10F in our garden growing in a stump.