New and Restocked Plants

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.

A very hardy Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit Ceanothus.  If you are going to name something the Glory of Versailles then it had better be good!  A deciduous shrub to 6' or 7' high or more and 5' or so wide with soft powder blue panicles of scented flowers mid summer into fall.   C. americanus and the Mexican C. coeruleus are it's parents.

Evergreen alpine Aussie growing in the same habitat as Snow Gums.  This has billowy gray-green foliage and 1" white flowers borne on last year's wood.  With age the bark exfoliates and reveals a very shiny trunk which adds to the allure.  Sun, good drainage, dryish and phooey to the deer.

This is a little charmer from a Diana Reeck collection in Yunnan which is quite short to just a few 6" tall but with very lovely pinkish and white flowers.  When we see this bloom it takes us back to those same woods where saw this same species a year after Diana collected its seed in 1996,  This is a sturdy little fellow increasing each year by offsets and reseeding a bit.

Fun and very hardy selection that has willowy and twisting branchlets sporting 2" light yellow flower brushes on the branch tips all pointing willy-nilly for wild Medusal effect with a long bloom period on older plants.  Happy in nearly any soil and happiest with regular water.  Not deer fodder.

A very attractive introduction by us from Yunnan if we do say so.  Broad lightly hairy leaves in a dense clump with lots of large soft lavender daisy flowers fringed heavily in very fine petals surround a prominent dark "cone".  Doesn't rebloom - just does it right the first time.

Much sought-after jewel of the rock garden is this slow dwarf Willow.  This was found as a natural hybrid on the moors in Scotland and is prized by rock gardeners for its slow 2"-3" of growth per year with nice rounded foliage and stoutly twiggy habit.  Always spendy, always worth it.

Small scale evergreen Hebe and one of the hardier ones for the PNW.  This is attractive in flower or out as it has very tidy foliage and a pleasing mounding habit. The flowers are small and white and sometimes with a bit of a mauve tinge but anyone would say white.

A choice little woodland groundcover from our collection in a high elevation coniferous forest in Yunnan where it grew not far from Primula sonchifola and Megacodon stylophorus.  Slow carpeter with white flowers and small pale orange fruit nestled in the nicely textured leaves..  Choice and not invasive by a long shot.

Evergreen mat-former with very large cobalt blue trumpets spring to early summer.  This might ruin your other blue flowers for you as they will look embarassingly insipid in comparison.   A rich moist soil in full to mostly sun is best.  Despite popular opinion, these are pigs and thrive on a good manure mulch!

There is nothing gloomy about Glumicalyx because it has chocolate scented flowers and we all know chocolate is a natural antidepressant.  Tough South Afican   which makes a low clump of evergreen leaves which sprout 10" stems of white bells which open to orange-red.

We are quite pleased with ourselves for collecting seed of this desireable and scarce variant in the eastern Sino-Himalaya.  This hardy Ginger relative has large flowers with white dorsal petals and a broad white labellum liberally washed in violet.  Very plant-nerd worthy as well as being just a beautiful addition to the garden.

Chilean Fire Tree.   Our classic all-time Desert Island plant where if we were stranded and could only choose one plant etc. we would be sitting beneath an Embothrium munching a Tyler Street Pesto Savory Scone and drinking a Townsend Bay Pinot Gris.  A 4 alarm inferno of flame red flowers.

This charmer with white unarmed Thistle-like flowers may well be ssp. insularis but there is a dearth of both information as well as time to review that information.  Maybe this winter when the plants are dormant.  Under a foot high with nice showy white flowers in mid to late summer.

Butcher's Broom.  Stiff branches of these were gathered into brooms for the serious sweeping required in European shops.  This is the choice metrosexual form not needing a partner to set red marble fruit right on the "leaf" surface.  Slow growing, evergreen, drought tolerant.  Medicinal.

Oddity from the high alpine meadows of Tibet, China, Nepal and Bhutan which we have grown for a number of years.  A tap-rooted species making clumps of narrow green leaves from which up to 2' stems arises in summer bearing curious round heads of closely packed small white flowers.  A conversation starter.

A Bee Balm native to the Ocoee River in Tennessee and formally described as a new species in 2015 thanks to the work being done by botanist Aaron Floden. Nice white flowers on what for us has been a shorter plant of 18" or so but we expect it to be a bit taller in the garden.  First introduced in the US as Monarda sp. nova by Far Reaches in 2014.

Crazy species which we coveted at Windcliff and Duane West dug us up a nice chunk - with permission from Dan of course.  Weird brown flowers are scented. Differs from the related K. typhoides by having strongly keeled leaves in a non-distichous arrangement.  Cool in a nerdy way.

One of my favorite Alliums from Mark McDonough with cool gray green foliage and sugar pink 2" balls of flowers in midsummer.  This is a rhizomatous type making nice clumps without being invasive.  The foliage looks good during bloom and the bees & butterflies have a rugby scrum over the nectar.

One of the class acts of the winter blooming shrub world.  This lemon yellow-flowered selection of the Paper Bush is an affirmation of spring with its late winter flowers on bare stems.  The common name comes from the high quality paper once made from its bark.  Sun to part sun for best bloom.

From a seed collecting trip to the Andes, we acquired this rarely cultivated tree. Excellent foliage  with superb sinuous trunk and branching structure with thickly papered exfoliating bark.  Though in the Rose family, the flowers are nothing to speak of.  We think Zone 8 for this and careful siting in colder portions of this zone.

A collection from Tibet by Daniel Winkler.  This is one of the Asian rhizomatous onions making a nice clump of broadly grassy foliage with leaves 12"-15" long.  The flowers are in shades of pink and are open rounded umbels whose drooping florets look a bit like some of the fireworks seen in a Fourth of July evening sky. Hardy to at least zone 6 and likely lower.

Nice rich red form of the Pasque Flower.  This makes over time a full mound of finely dissected foliage with a bunch of flower stems bearing the large cheery red flowers.  Sun and some decent drainage and you're good to go.

Fabulous hybrid ornamental Origano (O. rotundifolium x O. scabrum) which is both heat and drought tolerant and a perfect choice for the sunny rock garden or top edge of rockery wall.  This really does need sharp drainage to perform its best.  In the Midwest, it is used as an annual in window boxes.  Light pink flowers all summer long.

A great Dianthus which was like pulling teeth to get Sue to part with a couple.  Makes a fine blue mat of foliage which is covered in eyes-a-popping single magenta pink flowers which have an intoxicating fragrance.  First class rockery plant - killer with that black quarry rock.

A selection of this outstanding European alpine species notable for having large flowers and being quite a good bloomer. Not all acaulis flower freely but 'Krebs' brings it with large upward-facing trumpets of impossible blue in mid spring.  Now you don't have to be embarrased you have Krebs.  Rich moist soil in sun.  Hardy to zone 5.

Got lots of sun and sandy or well-drained soil with average to low fertility in a dryish garden beset by rabbits and deer but still want lots of flowers for the bees and other pollinators? Look no further as this will nicely fill the bill. Mature plant has hundreds of pink papery bracted flowers in midsummer on drooping stems. Best displayed in a raised bed.

A sure-to-be favorite is this hybrid from Denver's Kelly Grummons who crossed or perhaps found a bee seedling between Salvia darcyi and S. microphylla. This 2015 Plant Select introduction wowed us when we saw it in Denver in 2014. Blood-red flowers on 3'-4' stems from late June to October and hardy to zone 5. Grummons - you rule, dude!

A quietly fun perennial that should be on every green flower afficionado's hit list.  Lance-shaped leaves and branched stems bearing dull yellow tiny button flowers arising from green buds and all surrounded by a prominent green collar.  Lovely green effect with plenty of structural detail.  Archibal collection from the Pyrenees/Cantabrian Mts.

A hybrid seedling selection between Eucryphia glutinosa and E. cordifolia that showed up at Mount Usher Gardens in Ireland thanks to some discerning work done by the local pollinators.  The deciduous E. glutinosa brings good hardiness and the E. cordifolia adds excellent flower and evergreen foliage.  Uncommon in the trade.  Tall narrow habit.