New and Restocked Plants

Very choice species native to CA and growing on old stablized sand dunes where it can reach 3' high and twice as wide.  This could make a nice specimen plant, low hedge or large informal groundcover.  Drought and salt tolerant with early season white flowers and birds will eat the fruit.

Exceptional Mountain Ash form our collection on the summit of Leigongshan in Guizhou where this was a multi-trunked small tree/large shrub to 10' with nice clusters of white berries.  This species is being grown in the UK but they have yet to put a name to it.  From the highest point in its range.  Freakin' Cool!

Frosted Jade Ajuga. This choice selection has fantastic foliage and very good dark cobalt flowers.  Not a spreader - this makes a clump with 16" tall stems.  Challenges all of your comfy notions about Ajuga but in a good way.  Great in our shade garden.

A fine foliage plant in the family Urticaceae and it is easy to see the family resemblance in it's cousin the nettle.  But no worries, this is a venomless pussycat making a clump of tall stems with dangling panicles of tan flowers.  Great texture for the moist shade garden.  From China/Korea.

Our collection from Leipingshan at 1800 meters in Guizhou in the fall of 2012.  We always get a kick out of this species with its long tropical pinnate leaves. insignificant pale flowers and extraordinarily significant clustered large blue bean pod fruit looking otherwordly.  Narrow small tree and very easy.

Named by plant guru John Flintoff who found this as an interesting seedling growing in plantswoman Loie Benedict's garden. Light green leaves with a spreading habit and flowers of a soft muted lavender which happily goes with most everything. As long as the soil is reasonably moist, this will be good in sun to light shade and is resistant to deer and rabbits.

A fine hardy hybrid from Deb and Ron Monnier whose nursery, Monnier's Country Gardens in Woodburn, OR closed in 2009.  This knockout will keep the memory alive for years to come.  Maroon tube and sepals embrace a corolla that is black velvet eggplant in color with an optical texture that is almost 3D.  To 3' and hardy in the PNW.  Mulch in winter.

The typically blue-flowered European species but from a great source.  Thanks to our friend and Hepatica guru John Massey of Ashwood Nurseries for sharing seed. We have flowered these plants and they are indeed blue! Perfect in the woodland garden, very hardy and with impeccable provenance.

Cretan Arum.  Aside from Crete, this is found in Turkey as well.  A beautiful species that checks the boxes for drought/heat tolerance as this is a summer dormant bulb.  The green leaves appear in fall and have been undamaged here in winter drops to 10F so guessing can go lower.  Scented soft yellow spathes.

A Far Reaches introduction to the US from the UK.  This uncommon selection is a worthy addition to the gentian collection.  Fairly vigorous, this has ample mid-blue trumpets emblazoned with slim white arrows in the interior.  As with all the Asiatic Gentians, rich, moist & acidic.

Beautiful sky-blue trumpets with a white throat in September on this Gentiana ornata x farreri hybrid.  Granted a Royal Horticultural Society First Class Certificate in 1936, we've righted a wrong by finally making this fine UK selection available in the US.  Slow but steady in the Colonies!

An Asian Sour Gum or Tupelo related to our own eastern Nyssa sylvatica. This deciduous tree does flower but not that you would notice although it does produce small bluish fruits in Fall. Fast-growing with largish leaves often carrying bronzy-purple tones when young.

Chinese Bald Cypress. Another one of those monotypic genera we love! This deciduous conifer is the only species in the genus and highly threatened by habitat loss in the wild. This will get to be a big tree which your yet unborn child's children can sit under. In their boat. Fairly slow - ours is in our bog garden pond.

Native to the New Jersey Pine Barrens this is a choice prostrate ornamental Cherry.  This is a creeper kind of hummocking along getting maybe 18" high by 10' long.  Easily kept in bounds by pruning.  Small white flowers followed by small black cherries.  Great red fall color.

Rare plant found only in limited areas in central Honshu, Japan where it likes the forest fringes in the subalpine areas and is known as hiiragi-sou or holly tree-leafed weed.  Hiiragi-sou sounds better than the translation.  This selection has dark blue flowers and is a deciduous clumper to 16" tall - very nice!

Quite the stunner and a selection we don't think is available here in the US as this is one we have brought back from the United Kingdom although it doesn't seem too united at the moment.  Very clean white margins to the green leaves which clad the 2' stems with very pleasing burnt orange flowers.  Not aggressive and good tolerance to cold. Just a few.

The cream of the the New Zealand woody Asters and a star in the rock garden.  This comes from the alpine areas of the mountains near Marlborough up to 1900 meters.  Flowers are a bit of yellow teminal nothings but the whipcord silvery branchlets are exquisite perfection.  Full sun and drier lean soil will suit this.  Took 3 nights of 0F at Hedgerows Nursery in 2009.

Or Pyrrosia porosa var. porosa depending on how you view monomorphic indument. This Felt Fern is widely distributed in China and Taiwan with 6" strappy leaves soft as the ears on our friends new kittens, Oliver and Stanley.   This would be found as an epiphyte in trees or shaded rock outcrops or cliffs that are moist.

White Willow Gentian. One of the truly excellent late summer/early fall blooming plants which jazzes up the shade garden with lots of stems in a circular arching vase shape with fountains of white flowers along the stems.

Plantsman and bulb expert Jim Fox was staying with friends in England and admiring their fine Nerine 'Quentin' in their border which had a few seed which he passed to us. Mere decades later and - Voila! - we have Quentinlettes. Quentin is highly regarded in England and the offspring are good too.

A superior red seedling that arose here and one that is a bit larger than the other large red selections we grow. It was fun to lay out a table of flowers of all the cultivars and our seedlings for comparative evaluation.  It was quickly apparent that it is hard not to love red and might as well go big. Just add water, food and sun.

Hearkening back to our 1997 collection in Yunnan, this persistent little onion is testament to what keeping calm and carrying on can do for you.  Thin, grassy clumps of leaves with small heads of pink flowers held above makes this daintily appealing.  This likes a reasonably moist, rich soil. Often seen with the name "amabile" appended to it, which is an invalid synonym.

Our collection of what we presume to be the species psilophyllus although the immature seed capsules match corymbosus.  Time will tell and either way, a fine deciduous shade tree with panicles of white flowers in May and June. Flora of China does not list either species as growing at the collection location which is cool.

Our collection from Guangxi on a mountain area little explored by Westerners.  This Mondo Grass had leaves to 2' long and fairly lax.  Flower stems just 3" tall with surprisingly nice mauve flowers that give way to typical shiny Ophiopogon fruit in the fall.  Excellent textural evergreen for shade with a bonus of good flowers.

Our China collection of this most remarkable species. Favoring rich, moist areas which is required to pump up the nearly 6' in length frond volume. These fronds extend out laxly horizontally which assists in their asexual reproduction from plantlets developing from the little furry balls - careful! - at frond's end. Mulch crown in cold winters.

A free-flowering, lower carpeting form of this choice species that is ideal in the rock garden and one we acquired from our friends at Rumbling Bridge Nursery in Scotland.  This Croatian native has a tidy personna, showy mauve-pink flowers and small leaves coloring well in winter.  When we say carpeting, it's more of a place mat.

Typically a white-flowered Tasmanian native evergreen tree, this pink version was found in 1984 by Ken Gillanders. Must have been jaw-dropping as the plant was 65' tall although the tallest in cultivation is perhaps 25'. Serious authorities have it hardy zones 7-10 but we'll say Z 8-10 and best sheltered from freezing/drying wind.

Selected from Darrell Probst's collection in South Korea, this puts on a show being especially free with flaunting its floral wares.  Yellow flowers in such quantity over the low grassy foliage in May that on a cool day it seems like you could warm your hands on them.  A rewarding semi-evergreen small patch in part sun to bright shade.

A hybrid Gesneriad between Briggsia (now Oreocharis) aurantiaca and Opithandra primuloides which we succumbed to at Aberconwy Nursery in Wales.  White bilaterally symmetric flowers touched in faint pink with throats patterned in pink lines.  Easy in cool greenhouse but can tolerate some frost so mild gardens maybe ok.

Likely the first introduction of this gorgeous evergreen broadleaf tree from Vietnam.  The small yellowish flowers are held in terminal panicles, and not a big show.  What is astounding every single day is the exfoliating bark which reveals sensuously smooth mocha skin, soft as the supple inner thigh of your vacation Island lover.