One of the best of the Blue Poppies and certainly one of the most reliably perennial. This large flowers of good medium blue. This appreciates a partly sunny to bright dappled shaded position with good loose organic soil that drains yet doesn't dry out. A percentage does die after blooming so save seed to be safe!
Rollicking twining Monkshood from China that delights in scrambling up into shrubs or onto thin trellage. Although a fine and aristocratic perennial, it remains devoid of snobbery embracing chainlink as if it were ornate wrought iron at an Antebellum mansion. Dusky lavender flowers.
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.
As neither of us were lucky enough to be debutantes ourselves, growing this 'Debutante' is ample solace. The flowers are small but tend to face upwards opening orange but fading rapidly to a soft pink in the interior which is accented by a yellow eye while the exterior retains a deeper orange-red coloring. To 30" of tidy habit with conservative values until it blooms
Crimson Fans. An amazing clone of a hardy Korean species in the Saxifragaceae. The early spring flowers are little pale things which are les amuse-geules for the foliar main course. In sun, the leaves turn a screaming crimson as summer ages especially if briefly and carefully water stressed. Moist.
This is one of Darrell Probst's selection of a fine Asian species. We saw his trial grounds of thousands of seedlings of this species and he selected this one for dense habit and heavy flowering. BLUE upright facing flowers from midsummer into fall and who doesn't like blue? A Chinese medicinal as well.
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!
This is a late flowering form of this perfectly hardy species with brilliant orange and yellow flowers above gray-green foliage. Since it is a late bloomer, try this against a south or west wall where it will bask in the heat and be shielded from early frosts. Great for extending that fall color with a splash of bloom.
Choice selection with loose sprays of fine ice blue flowers in spring. This is a good little spreader for shade to dappled shade in moist soil that drains. Plenty hardy for our area and makes a lovely understory for larger plants as this only gets a few inches high.
A plant of refinement to be sure. One that is appreciated and admired by the higher echelons of gardening. A collector's plant. Different ways of saying that this is not a flamboyant show-stopper but a tasteful blend of delicate texture and airy soft pink flowers that helps make it all work.
A very cool species from wild collected seed in South Africa. We are thrilled to offer this choice little goody. Beautiful pale salmon flowers with delicate highlights in the throat. This is so much better in our opinion than those big Glad hybrids which always remind me of funerals.
Asiatic Gentian with big deep blue trumpets on this mat forming beauty. Rich moist acidic soil is best for this late summer-fall bloomer. Outrageous in bloom.
This is one of those gently spiny plants of which we are so enamored. Purple tinged green leaves are lovely in combination with the many small mauve-pink thistle-like flowers late in the season. Not weedy in the slightest. Decent soil that drains.
A durable and satisfying groundcover hybridized by Jim Ault at Chicago Botanic Garden using V. armena and V. pectinata 'Rosea' as parents. What he got was a plant that makes an evergreen mat 2" high by 3' across in just 3-4 years with rich violet blue flowers accented by a white center. Odd name coming from Chicago.
A collection by Daniel Winkler from Tibet of this Columbine kin which was previously know as S. ecalcarata. This looks for all the world like a spurless Columbine and is just as and rewarding to grow with dainty downturned pink cupped flowers in late spring and early summer. Widespread in China, Korea and Japan.
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!
A fine selection with pleasantly gentle butter-yellow leaves and a long display harmonius blue flowers. This is one of those weaver geraniums with long questing flowering stems which weave into surrounding shrubs. We have ours planted at the base of a rose in our sunny border.
Our collection from the Siskiyou Mts in southern Oregon of this moisture-loving lily. Reddish-orange Turk's cap flowers with the red more pronounced toward the ends of the tepals or petals. This is a good garden species with rhizomatous bulbs making for a good clump in time.
A choice woodland creeper for the shade or partly shaded garden where it behaves like Anemone nemorosa - making a mat of ferny foliage but in this case, it has vibrant yellow flowers. A patch of this is to be coveted. Very hardy and goes mid to late summer dormant.
From a Crug Farm collection comes this rare woodlander. We are smitten by all the members of this genus as well as it's kith and kin in other genera. This has the pendulous greenish white flowers so familiar yet so intriguing. A shade garden bereft Convallariaceae quietly weeps.
Really good German hybrid with Gentiana veitchorum as a major genetic contributor. We're obsessed by the Asiatic Gentians ( this is one) and we well remember G. veitchorum blooming in the alpine fields on the Zhongdian Plateau. Big dark blue trumpets in September. Rich moist soil in mostly sun.
Our buddy Lance sent us some amazing Sax fortunei selections from Japan. Some with great foliage and wonderful snowflake flowers, others with simply immense flowers (for the species) in pinks and whites. Blew our minds. We collected seed from them all so this should be good to awesome.
Asiatic Hybrid with Gentiana sino-ornata in its past, this is a very fine introduction by Truls and Emma at Wild Ginger Farm. Large white flowers with a few green flecks in the throat are improbable contrast to the dense green fine needle-like foliage in August and September. Rich moist soil in mostly sun. Zone 5.
One of the finest False Solomon Seal's around and rarely obtainable. These are spirit-breakingly slow to grow from seed so a plant of good size will heat up the credit card a bit. This seem like such perfection with stout stems arching gracefully and bearing a terminal plume of flashy white flowers.
What a great name! The flowers on this fairly smolder above the icy blue-green foliage and it is only the coolness of the leaves which prevents spontaneous combustion. Surprisingly sun tolerant and a very satisfying period of bloom from late spring well into summer. Non-running.
Divsions from the original seed collection by the Alpine Garden Society Expedition to China (ACE). Very difficult to obtain authentic material such as this outside of botanic gardens. Bold pinnate leaves and tall bold yet airy wands of pale white flowers touched so lightly in salmon.
One of those spring ephemerals we totally groove on. This tuberous Toothwort is native to the woodlands of the former Yugoslavia so current geography is from Bosnia through Croatia and into stable Austria. This will form a little colony but is not annoying in the least and is so delightful with its sizable white flowers in March.
Found in Boone North Carolina by an extension agent, this Glad is possibly a hybrid with dalenii and has pretty awesome cold hardiness having proven itself in zone 6. June flower spikes to 4' with apricot flowers touched in peach at the petal tips as well as in the throat. Very good increaser as this makes numerous cormlets so spread the love.
This Asiatic Gentian has fully double dark blue flowers lasting for weeks in late August into Fall and will cause visitors to perform a potentially dangerous pivot in midstep as they are strolling by when they realize they are seeing double so have your waivers all signed. Sun and moist acidic soil.
Quite a magnificent selection from Fernhill Gardens in Dublin, Ireland. Broad pleated leaves somewhat arching are simply perfect with the fat spikes of closely spaced yellow-orange flowers. Our plants came from the extraordinary former garden of Linda Cochran and the best planting we have seen of this was at Nita Jo Rountrees luscious garden.
