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Truly a Sea Holly as this Eryngium is a dune plant throughout a good part of Europe. Hard to beat texturama for the dry garden, Mediterranean style or really, any ol' garden as long as you aren't too nice to it. Good drainage in lean soil and you can bask in the splendor of the gray, lightly spiny foliage and the small light purple flower buttons.

A well toothed and lilac-flowered cultivar of this primula that has coped well with less-than-perfect conditions and is considered easily open-grown or placed in a rock/alpine garden. Keep from too much wet to fully enjoy the farinose dusting of the foliage. These were said to originate from the trenches of the Napoleonic wars, echoing a time-honored symbology of regrowth after war-time.

The all but unseen in the U.S. variegated form of one of the supreme small ornamental grasses. Retains the string-of-pearls white flowers while transforming the blades into an unmatchable pastel rainbow that on closer inspection betrays its elegant components of green blades with a white central stripe tipped by a purplish-pink. Its rare that a grass can reach the sublime but I think its fair to say this one does.

For those who have grown ferns from spore you know that Cyrtomium are how-shall-we-say convivial, popping up where you least expect them. So here an offering for those who appreciate the unexpected joys of life. Due to their dubious origins we can't place a certain name or collection to them but the genus is notoriously indistinguishable anyway. What we can guarantee are the usual smooth evergreen sickle-pinna-ed leaves of the stalwart holly fern that mean you are equally assured of a first-rate garden plant.

The deciduous Photinia beauverdiana is a loose-limbed, sinuous presence in the garden. White flowers are followed by showy clusters of orange-red fruit which hold their position long enough for a slam dunk combination with the autumnal yellow of the leaves. Kelly was standing on a sloped mossy rock stretching to collect a fruit of this for a friend when he fell, holding the fruit safely aloft rather than using his hand to break his fall, and cracked a rib. From that day on, he has trash-talked this graceful species as "That phucking Photinia". A well-loved punchline lost to its taxonomic repositioning into Pourthiaea, well those 'Pour' taxonomists are just gonna have to suck it up cause we give everything for the bit here.

Ahh the beach, sun, salt, spray and....botanizing? What can we say we can't help ourselves, and locally when doing some beachside botanizing what is likely to draw you in is that perfect beach body, hairy and bigheaded, that's right we're talking Carex macrocephala, the big-headed sedge. Normal grassy sedges have edges leaves but with far more flower power than your average Carex. Rare in cultivation so sandy and well-draining if you want to be safe, but will likely tolerate a wide range of conditions like its brethren.

There is some debate over the hybridity of this cultivar (or cultivar group potentially) and we are pulled in differing directions by the prevalence of hybrid suspicions normally winning out and the relative rarity of true hybridization in most ferns. Regardless of whether it is a mutt or a purebred it is a fine variation on an already classic theme. Finely cut fronds with such regularity in shape that one could easily be forgiven for assuming it to be an unfamiliar species. Cultivar ferns can be a bit marmite but I think even the purists would find this acceptable if not outright agreeable. (It is entirely possible if not likely that the correct name for this plant is 'Cornubiense Foliosum', see Martin Rickard's book on Polypodium for a full idea of the complexities)

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. White flowers are of good size.