Outeniqua Yellowwood Or African Fern Pine.  An interesting conifer in the Podocarpus family from southern Africa which has made impressive trees with bushy, rounded crowns in California.  We want this to grow here and it will in very mild gardens until we have that one week of winter which keeps us from being San Francisco.  Things are changing though so consider strategic positioning for the future.

A compact little guy carrying very nice white flowers which benefit from extra petals giving it a little more floral punch.  If you can and no one complains, then why not?  Mulch in winter and decent drainage and feel free to plant it in a very sunny hot spot.

A lovely cultivar introduced to this area by the enigmatic Pete Ray of Vashon and no relation to our local Kingston.  Tastefully narrow deciduous leaves with medium small flower heads of a good clear mid-blue.  Hardy and a good performer in the garden.  Sun and deer resistant.

One of the very best of the white variegated Agapanthus.  This has superb clean white variegation which coupled with the abundant blue flowers in mid to late summer is frankly dazzling.  A dwarf selection that lends itself well to containers - just don't let the pots freeze in winter!

A cracking plant originally collected in the Lydenburg District of Mpumalanga of South Africa and grown for years in the treasure house of Kirstenbosch Botanic Garden. Upright gray-green leaves lead the eye up and up to over 40" where the pale sky blue flower heads with large drooping individual florets are captivating.

Cute little hardy Aloe we got from our friend Jeff Erickson.  This makes a tight clump of rosettes and has a 8"-12" stem of soft orange tubular flowers in summer.  This is hardy in milder gardens here especially grown in a sunny bed under the eves where it gets winter rain protection and benefits from some heat from the house.

A perennial (usually anyway) thistle relative from South Africa which makes a multicrowned clump of softly spiny leaves which by themselves merit nothing more than a good hosing of Roundup but the large purplish flowers are the swan emerging from the ugly duckling.

One of the truly elegant cultivars and one that will be the toast of the garden.  Tall stems with fingers of flowers heldout like a ladies hand extended to be kissed.  Refined petals nicely spaced reeks of breeding and affluence yet is always up to knocking back a cold brew ot two.

A nice smaller selection from Great Dixter which distinguishes itself from the pack by a shorter habit and flower stems held rather laterally so the blaze of red-orange flowers are displayed on the horizontal making it perfect for viewing from above.  Plus it carries that Dixter mystique.

Plant breeder Ken Ridgely did us all a solid when he introduced this incredibly graceful and aptly named Crocosmia.  Tall lithesome stems to 4' hold golden orange flowers with poise and aplomb and whose long narrow petals show the great line extension inherent to ballet with the pointing of toes implied.

This has yellow flowers as clean and pure as butter churned by hand by a virtuous and chaste milkmaid on a farm set in the Alps where the cows while away the summer days grazing in meadows alight with wildflowers and the unhurried soft clank of an unseen cowbell becomes music impossible to improve upon.

This is not commonly grown and only a handful of nurseries in the UK offer this 1918 George Henley introduction and you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the US. Small flowers touched red on the outside of the tepals and fusing into yellow on the inside presenting a very pleasing two-toned effect.

If this is what you get for sinning then I can hardly wait!  New selection from the UK that has to be Lucifer's love child.  This is much better than that old devil with dark sooty stems holding deeper blood red flowers with a wider flared corolla. So bad it's good.  Burn, baby burn!

Aptly named, a Crocosmia of truly majestic proportions and grandeur of flower.  Arguably the finest large-flowered cultivar in the world, this indeed has the largest flowers among the 150 or so varieties we grow,  Wide open rich orange yellow faces with dark red-orange backs on 40" stems.  It rules.

One of our favorites (in the top 50!) for a couple of reasons.  We like the visual heft of the foliage as it nicely broad and stout.  We also like that it is not an aggressive spreader although it means we don't offer it often.  Mostly we like the substantial and dense sprays of flame red open flowers.

The enigmatic iconoclast Pete Ray of Puget Garden Resources, brought this perky selection back from the UK.  Smaller than most varieties both in height and flower size, this has that cheeky something that the others would give their right anther for.  Flowers are a perfect bicolored symmetry of red and yellow on stems to 2 feet or so.

We got tired of folks asking for Jenny after seeing her in our border so being saavy entrepeneurs we potted some up.  This is a dandy Crocosmia of smaller habit with tasty flowers of butterscotch infused yellow.  Not a piercing yellow but of a gentle hue.  Jenny has class after all.

One of the better of the clear yellow hybrids with nicely presented flowers that while of good size are not so overly large that they bow down the stems.  We've come to like the clean yellows as they bring something refreshingly uncomplicated to the garden bed and the fewer issues in bed, the better.

Unlike the cataclysmic explosion, this provides a sustained display of fiery color . It has made a very satisfying clump in our full afternoon sun display beds outside our shade garden and we have been promising to pot some of this up for 3 years now and Voila! - we finally did this winter. Of medium height with arching stems seeming perfectly distributed in the clump.

A refined selection with rich bright red flowers and named in 1993 by Cornwall gardener John Hogan for Lana de Savary.  We can't fault the name as a cursory google search reveals that the socialite Lana de Savary is not only red-haired but apparently both bright and ungodly rich.  We have more cool plants than her though.

We believe Rhett, this Crocosmia is no lady.  Really, are you looking for some refined creature when you buy a Crocosmia?  I think not - it's hussies, hotties, tramps and trollops that get's it done in the garden.  This has big heads of bright red flowers more flared than Lucifer.

One of our favorites - and we know you have seen this on other Crocosmia descriptions here - but it is even more true with this one!  Not to say the others are less favored, mind you.  Large, wide open orange-yellow flowers with a vivid dark orange ring in the center surrounding a slightly paler throat.  Well-displayed to nearly 3' tall.

From the breeding work of Bob Brown comes this crazy good plant. On very stout stems, the big flowers with broad rounded tepals are bunched together in nice fat heads and the flowers are a melange of peachy apricoty pink hues. One of the very best of the recent introductions.

This is an awesome plant with very large flowers of excellent substance clustered in dense heads which compounds the visual impact. Tall stems to 40" just to make sure you won't miss seeing this in bloom. A good even rich yellow that is not brightly strident but very capable of mingling with other colors or carrying the display load on its own.

Award of Garden Merit recipient in the UK where gardening is just not a pleasant diversion but a way of life.  A flower color of soft tomato with infusions of orange and red on a good mid-sized flower.  This is not a shy bloomer and not a runner so blooms heavy in dense clumps.

A top-flight cultivar. compact in stature with apricot-tinged yellow flowers which are far from strident and olive-green foliage.  These are divisions from plants brought from England many years ago and are not tissue-cultured and so don't have the little deviations from what is near perfection.

This is an Alan Bloom selection from Bressingham Gardens which he introduced in 1970.  'Spitfire' is a feisty little plant making a dense clump of thin leaves with flared open fiery red-orange flowers held closely together in which the many presents as one to great effect.  A smaller mounding plant than some of its kin.

This exceptionally large flowered selection is going to be a star in any sunny garden where it's unrivaled flower size leaves most other Crocosmias wishing they hadn't been mired in ethical dilemmas and just gone ahead and done the testosterone injections.

Big cheerful yellow flowers which open widely on stems to nearly 30" tall are the reason for growing this selection.  This can help make some of the late season fiery colors seem even more intense by comparison or if asked to carry the floral load on its own, it is more than up to the task,.

This UK selection has good ripe tomato red flowers arrayed nicely on the stem and held out horizonatally to optimize viewing. Very accommodating those Brits. The flowers are nicely ranked with some overlap which creates a showy floral synergistic effect. This is a compact grower to just a couple feet tall.