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These grow beautifully in the UBC Asian Garden in Vancouver where it grows up to 15'. Typically we would expect 6' or so in in the garden with the pale waxy evergreen leaves providing nice backing for the creamy multi-petaled flowers. Best in a mild garden like Seattle or PT.

A collection by Sweden's Goteborg Botanical Garden's 3 Henriks in China's Shaanxi Province at Nan Gong Shan 1250 meters. This is a small tree to 20'-30' with purplish new growth expanding to broadly cordate leaves and early summer pouchy flowers of pale red with yellow striations and purple spotting. Fast growing hardy tropical look. Cutting grown.

Very cool Candelabra type Primrose with whorls of rich black cherry flowers. Very distinctive and definitely eue-catching. Loves a moist rich soil where it will gently self sow and frankly boogie until dawn.

One of those perennial Lobelia that shouldn't be as hardy as it is but mountainous areas of southern Arizona and northern Mexico have plants with surprising hardiness. A graceful clump of thin willowy leaves on stems 15"-24" tall with a profusion of midsummer tubular red flowers with a bright yellow throat. Deciduous in winter, ours handles our brief drops to 10F with mulch. Good drainage aids in winter survival.

This is a treasure among Pokers. A small statured species with big time bloom from South Africa introduced to the NW by one of the finest small nurseries in the country, Hedgerows Nursery in OR who have now retired and we are diminished as a result. David and Susie grew exceptional plants nearly perfectly and their level of excellence is what we gauge ourselves against. Of course David cheated with that damned English accent. Back to the plant under discussion -this Kniphofia doesn't know the word quit and after a main heavy spring bloom keeps throwing up flowers spikes sporadically throughout the season given ample water and food. This was a rare plant in just a few localities near Durban in South Africa and is now thought to be extirpated in the wild. Not as hardy as some, this benefits from a good mulch if temps drop into the teens in which case it is happy as a clam.

This a bigger version of the little B. penna-marina ssp. alpina commonly found in nurseries. We never see this offered which is just a shame since it is a great fern. Well, not such a shame since a little exclusivity never hurts. This makes a dense groundcover of evergreen foliage.

Alternate-leaved Golden Saxifrage. Love it when customers share interesting plants with us which is how we came by this little goody. This is pretty much circumarboreal in the northern hemisphere where it is often found in rock outcrops in moist areas. Nice rounded evergreen leaves and umbels of yellow flowers in spring. This is going to work nicely as a small scale groundcover in a moist lightly shaded spot. It grows in some pretty northern cold areas with a distinctly continental climate so good and hardy.

Fragrant Dwarf False Indigo. An excellent plant for the xeric garden although not the best in sandy soils since it hails from good prairie soil in the midwest from central Canada down to Texas. Nice small woody shrub with erect small spikes of clustered small tubular flowes of violet blue petals and red stamens - whoa!

You don't have to sell your soul to have this in your garden but once you see it, you would be more than willing. New selection from the UK that has to be Lucifer's love child. This is so much better than that old devil. Stout dark sooty stems holding deep burning red flowers with a wide flared corolla that lacks only the smell of brimstone and the wail of sinners. We do get involuntary high-pitched keening from people who see our big display plant so maybe we're just missing the brimstone. Quite difficult to come by, these are single large corms we would typically put into a gallon pot for sale here at the nursery.

Second generation plants from our collection of this Solomon's Seal from the Cangshan in Yunnan. This has narrow leaflets arrayed in tiers with small bell-shaped pale white flowers overlaid in a dusky wash and which are clustered near the leaf bases which later become red-orange fruit bunched like small grapes. Surprisingly sun tolerant given enough water. In our lath house shade garden which is fairly bright, this has become quite impressive in the last few years making a bamboo-like clump of herbaceous stems to 7'-8' which makes us very happy.

Perfect fine texture with a silver sheen all year long. This is a gorgeous evergreen that further delights in the summer with small white flowers. Pinch it if you want it bushy and don't treat it too nice - it prefers a leaner soil that drains well. Tolerant of dry when established and likes full sun.

Twisted Stalk. One of our favorite natives (the list spans several pages of small print) of our woodlands is this Solomon's Seal relative. These are seed-grown from a collection near Easton WA. Branched stems bear dangling white flowers followed by showy red-orange fruit.

Black Mondo Grass. One of the classiest ornamentals and maybe the best for providing color and textural contrast, this can find a home in any garden. Fairly drought tolerant but thriving in more moist situations, this has evergreen (or everblack) leaves with pink flowers and shiny black pearl seeds. The cultivar names 'Nigrescens', 'Niger', and 'Black Dragon' have been very recently subsumed into 'Kokuryu'.

Did we mean to infer that this is a PINK Gillenia???? Why yes, we did. And it is. Pink, definitely pink. An exciting offering of a dandy variant on a choice eastern native. Pink Bowman's Root will get 24"-30" tall with multiple stems sporting an airy array of pink flowers. The leaf color will be improved and intensified with some sun and great fall color to boot. This can take full sun in our cool-sun maritime Northwest but part sun to shade in hotter areas.These are hefty plants field-grown for two years from the plug size one sees generally offered and are a cut above. Bringing the action on this one.

Pewter Moon Evening Primrose. A fine very large flowered form with green to gray leaves and reddish stems. Big rounded golden yellow flowers open at dusk and carry on well into the next day. A good hardy and drought tolerant plant that works it in the rock garden or Garden of Neglect. Worth growing just to watch the Sphinx Moths go delirious in the gloaming. Good drainage.

Dwarf Meadow Rue. One of the best of the smaller Thalictrums, this slowly creeps to create a small mat of attractive foliage topped by violet blue flowers. Yet another nice plant from Japan. Half sun is ideal but will take full sun with more moisture.

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..

This choice Chinese perennial is related to our native Ginger or Asarum and Saruma being an anagram of Asarum shows that even taxonomists are not above the occasional botanical hijink.. Felty heart shaped foliage bronze when young and half inch yellow flowers right away in spring continues to bloom through the summer. These succeeds nicely in Chicago which seems like Siberia to us softies here in the PNW. This is easy..

Odd Fuchsia hybrid which we got as cuttings from an old Heronswood employee. Actually she's not very old but we were referring to the original Heronswood. It appears to be a procumbens x excorticata cross with small reddish leaves on a low mounding plant. The narrow flowers are a metallic red and while not especially showy, gets credit for being structurally interesting. The foliage alone makes this very worthy of growing. This came with the name of 'Ruby Wedding' but that seems to be already in use with another Fuchsia cultivar so who knows. Probably someone in New Zealand.

Leatherflower Clematis. This infrequently encountered southeastern US native is just a gem. Rambling small vines to 8' at the most with fuchsia-purple closed bells which turn to white at the flared sepal (petal) tips. This blooms in late spring but continues to flower sporadically into fall. Perfect for clambering into shrubs or that small trellis which would get eaten by a Clematis armandii or Wisteria. For those of you to whom provenance matters as much as it does to us, this is a collection from Humphreys County Tennessee. Young sturdy plants which may or may not flower this year but we're thinking they will.