A Rare Plant Specialty Nurseryin Port Townsend Washington
Sue Milliken & Kelly Dodson, proprietors
Welcome to our online store and hope you
find many of the rare plants offered as fun as we do. We’ve been collecting, growing and learning
about plants all our lives and the excitement has simply grown with time and we
look forward to sharing our phytomaniacal obsession with you. There are worse things to be afflicted with
than gardening.
We have many more plants available here at the nursery that are not listed on our online store. Many are too large or don't ship easily or are in small quantities or we just haven't managed to get them up on the website. If we just didn't need to sleep, we could get more done. The nursery is not open all the time so check our hours and open days.
We propagate and grow most of our plants ourselves which allows us to grow many more impractical species than we should. Many times people shy away from a rare plant thinking it is hard to grow, but more often, it is difficulty of propagation or simply not fitting into a standard nursery routine that makes a plant rare in commerce. Of course, not all of our plants are uncommon - that would be leaving out way too many good ones!
You can start shopping now using the categories on the left, or read our Ordering Instructions first.
We will be adding new plants frequently so do check back. Please note that some of these will be newly potted divisions from this fall and winter and will not be showing much or any root development for early spring shipping but they will grow roots and be good plants.
We continue to enjoy the response from our customers - thank you! Here are a few of the comments we have received:
“Got my
order(s) today. My plants arrived beautifully packed,
healthy, and surprisingly large. Thank you Far Reaches Farm!” – B.
H. North Carolina
“I received my plants this morning and what fine ones they
were!Thank you, too, for the bonus
Iris. I will certainly sing your praises among the plant groups I
belong to and, rest assured, I will be ordering from you again.” – RH – Colorado
“Thank you, thank
you for your beautifully wrapped plants that made their way to Montana bursting with
vibrance and energy!” – LS – Montana
“This is my second order
with you. Your plants in my first order were large, healthy and very well
packed. I greatly appreciate doing business with you, and look forward to
more in the future. I understand you recently started offering plants
online mail order, it is great to have you as a resource for these beautiful
and rare plants. Keep up the great work, and know that you have a very
pleased and happy customer.” AO - Florida
“I received my plant order yesterday. I just want to say I
am so excited by the wonderful condition of the plants and the excellent
shipping conditions you provided! You did a wonderful job of
packing. The plants are in beautiful condition and are so healthy.
I also want to thank you for the bonus plant! I didn’t expect that so it was a
wonderful surprise. I will certainly recommend your mail order
services.”KD -- Washington
“you have sent me the finest mail-order plant material I
have ever received. Am spreading the word among all the Connecticut gardeners I know.” RK - Connecticut
Quart Pots This is the East Coast Skunk Cabbage, which while common to swamps and boggy areas in the upper third of the US, is an exotic collector's plant here. Tubby yellow flecked brown-purple flowers in this form squat on the bare soil before the big green Hosta-like leaves appear in early spring. Love it. Perfect early blooming plant for that difficult wet shaded spot. These will do fine in moist garden beds as well. These are sturdy seedlings from a collection near Simsbury CT in a swampy wood replete with black mud over the sneakers, mosquitoes and ticks but nonetheless very enticing as it did provide that rare legitimate excuse from visiting with family. Can't understand why they didn't follow us in.....
Gallon Pot This Japanese woodlander is among the very elite of all plants for shade. Slow to propagate and uncommonly beautiful, a well-grown mature plant is a prized trophy which marks you as a gardener to be reckoned with - in fact a microchip ID implant in the crown wouldn't be the worst idea. We have dogs so none of our plants are chipped. Yet. This is a coveted plant. I'm sure your friends are all completely fine but people talk and word gets out - just saying. This is a plant that can catapult a gardener to the next level and as a result formerly rigid moral parameters become a bit more plastic. Broad maple-like leaves are the foil for the large 3" light lavender crepe Poppy-esque flowers. Cool shade and a woodsy soil that doesn't dry out is ideal for this piece of art.
Medium Band Pot White Snakeroot. A release from the Mt Cuba Center in Delaware and selected for the richly chocolate colored foliage. This is a very hardy perennial and well named because just like sex, chocolate sells. (I've notice that often one leads to the other) Mid to late summer broccoli heads of small white flowers. Low maintenance.
Gallon Pot Pink Lily of the Valley. Charming pink form of an old fashioned standby which is a nice spreader for the shade garden and quite drought tolerant when established. Lovely in miniature bouquets where its sweet elusive scent teases the senses.
4" Pot Solomon's Seal. Mighty fine selection and surely one of the very best variegated perennials for shade. Good clean white variegation that illuminates wherever it is planted. Stunning enough to stand alone with a simple groundcover at its feet or schmoozes easily with other garden glitteratti. This doesn't increase overly quickly by any means and a large clump is very prized. Not to be confused with the old standby variegated Solomon's Seal which while nice, doesn't have nearly the degree of variegation as this selection.
Quart Pot A most impressive fern and one we've been privileged to see in its native haunts in China. This makes magnificent large long fronds, coppery when young and when mature, terminating in a single fuzzy small ball or gemma, which will become a new fern.
Quart Pot Chinese Ground Orchid. Hardy Orchid that does great outside here. My mom had a big patch on the west side of her house on the Hood Canal which had over 50 flower stems. Deep lavender-pink perfect orchid flowers. Easy. Mom's gardening doctrine was that of Benign Neglect so you should do fine. A friend of ours does well with these in Iowa with mulch so they are adaptable. They can take full sun here but we have wimpy sun so elsewhere part sun to even bright shade will be great.
Quart Pot Hardy Chinese Ground Orchid. This is one of the easiest terrestrial orchids (orchids planted in the ground) to grow and is also pretty darned hardy. This form has white edged leaves with strong stems of pink perfect orchid flowers. This is essentially a bulb and will increase each year to make a nice clump. Good to Zone 6 and a good mulch in those colder areas is not a bad idea. These appreciate a moist soil that still drains well.
