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
Small Band ($8) and Quart Pots ($10) We love white flowers in the shade garden. The juxtaposition against the dark earth and the interplay and mediation with other colors makes white an excellent choice. These have pure white flowers with a light chartreuse throat touched faintly in red and of course those perfectly mottled leaves.
Quart Pot One of the truly elegant cultivars and one that will be the toast of the garden. This is one of 5 surviving C. xcrocosmoides bred by Max Leichtlin of Baden-Baden Germany before 1895 that is still in cultivation. A true heirloom cultivar. Tall stems with fingers of flowers held out like a ladies hand extended to be kissed. Refined orange tepals nicely spaced reflects its obvious confident sense of self and of place which speaks to its heritage of Teutonic thoroughness and simmering superiority.
This is a rarely offered "Poker" species and these are beefy bare-root divisions from our few big stock plants in the field of which we have just a small number to offer. This is extremely rare and threatened in the wild and was thought extinct until the late 1990's when Cameron McMaster rediscovered 3 small lost populations of this species. Cameron recounting his discovery stated that many of the flower stems were 2 meters tall with the tallest towering over his head at 2.53 meters. From his writings you can tell that he was literally giddy over this important rediscovery as up until that point, this plant was known only from dried herbarium specimens. For the full account from Cameron, check out this link. Thanks to his efforts, we are able to offer a few of this extremely rare and majestic Kniphofia. This has elegant deep green 3'-4' long leaves and very late fall to early winter flowers which we usually get to enjoy for awhile until we get a killing frost. We are in the rain shadow of the Olympics which means clear skies and so we frost earlier then everyone else but there are lot of folks in mild areas who can wander their garden before sitting down to Thanksgiving turkey and enjoy seeing this Kniphofia in flower. Big flower heads densely packed with florets which are soft yellow in bud and then turn creamy when they open. Named for Mrs. Eileen Bruce who collected it from the type locality in 1954.
4" Pot Rhodohypoxis is a genus of small bulbs with dense grassy foliage and fairly large flowers for the size of the plant which are produced with exhuberance. This one of the legion of pink-tinged white selections and is a good grower given well-drained yet moist soil. Choice little rock garden subject.
Nice robust Crocosmia with vibrant trumpets of red and orange-yellow flowers. Flowers like hot coals with the same mesmerizing effect as staring into a fire absently swirling some 15 year Laphroig in your glass and thinking back upon opportunities seized or lost and past lovers real and that could have been and of all of the forks pondered in life's road and how time is fleeing by and there is so much left to do and just as I start to freebase unanswerable questions with no expectation of reply I glance at Emberglow and wonder how did it come to be that I am so lucky to have so many plants that capture my senses so completely as to send me traveling the astral plane soaring in grace and peace high above the scrabble that so often fractures my day?
Small Band Pot Rare double Snowdrop salvaged from the garden of Marian Raitz which somehow escaped the very focused Galanthus digging of Barbara Flynn. Thanks to Sue's eagle eyes and Jason's propagation, we've a few to share. This is an interesting little aberration introduced by Alan Street from a plant found in Blewbury, Oxfordshire. This has small outward facing flowers with congested inner green segments looking like little green tartlets according to one English authority anyway. This is one for the Galanthophile and one that we won't offer again for awhile.
Quart Pot A bright flare of rich red flowers makes this is an excellent garden plant which puts on a good show and was named for a woman of no small means and substance. To bestow such a namesake upon a plant of anything less than the first rank would be folly in more ways than a simple flatlander such as myself could conjure so that alone should speak to its merits. The spawn of breeding Crocosmia xcrocsmiiflora x 'Lucifer' in the late 1980's by A.J. Hogan in Cornwall resulted in some excellent seedlings. This was the cream of that crop and was named in 1993 and bears little resemblance to 'Lucifer'. A robust plant to 3' tall or so.
Quart Pot Dyce's Hybrid Fern. Named for Jimmy Dyce, one of the UK's late great fern guys, this is an outstanding garden plant. Vigorous and long fronds from 3'-4' long. These make a broadly spreading semi-evergreen vase and during spring and summer takes a backseat to no fern.
