Transatlantic Plantsman

Cheap plants – you get what you pay for

We stopped in at our local Lowe's today – and the plants there were very cheap. (For British readers, Lowe’s is more or less the equivalent of a vast B&Q.)

Amongst other things we spotted a flowering dogwood, Cornus florida ‘Cherokee Princess’. The lovely specimen in a 5 gallon pot was nearly 2m (6ft) high and priced at just $24.98 – that’s £12.55 in British money. This is too cheap, far too cheap. All the plants at Lowe's are cheap… Tempting at those prices, but actually worth more.

Now I don’t know which grower supplied Lowe's… But, in general, many people complain about the number of undocumented workers (“illegal aliens”) working in landscaping, horticulture and agriculture in the US yet because they’re on such low wages this is one of the reasons prices are so low. In fact, people complain loudly about undocumented workers in general – but still demand the cheapest possible prices. You can’t have it both ways.

Now, here’s the other side of it all. Low retail prices in any shop or nursery or garden center tends to mean low profit margins which tends to mean limited expense on technical expertise. In the same Lowe's was a batch of coreopsis labelled ‘Crème Brulée’. As you can see, the plants on offer were not ‘Crème Brulée’, the lovely cool, soft yellow form of C. verticillata (needle leaf coreopsis). The plants labeled ‘Crème Brulée’ were a much less special, brash gold form of the broader leaved C. grandiflora, perhaps ‘Elfin Gold’ – perfectly good variety, but not ‘Crème Brulée’.

So, perhaps, in the broad sense, you get what you pay for: a bargain dogwood, the wrong coreopsis – and, by the way, only one single variety of ornamental grass… grasses being just about the most popular of all perennials at the moment. And even that one ornamental grass was frost damaged – as were the acers, pieris and cherries.

What’s that quote about the price of everything and the value of nothing.

OF COURSE, instead, you can, of course, buy Cornus florida ‘Cherokee Princess’ and the genuine Coreopsis ‘Crème Brulée’ in good local nurseries and garden centers.

Alternatively, order Cornus florida ‘Cherokee Princess’ by mail order from Meadowbrook Nursery in North Carolina or from these four British nurseries. You can buy the genuine Coreopsis ‘Crème Brulée’ by mail order from White Flower Farm in Connecticut or from these twenty British nurseries.

Deer? They'll eat anything - even hellebores.

So… deer are not supposed to eat hellebores. Right? Wrong.

Visiting Seneca Hill Perennials on Sunday. Ellen hornig pointed out to me two clumps of the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, in the garden with the leaves eaten off by deer. It's often said hellebores are deer resistant; this proves they're not - deer will eat them.

I have to say, however, that there are many other clumps of hellebores in the garden, mostly forms of H. x hybridus, and most of those are untouched… with the foliage mostly looking green and healthy as the snow melts and with fat clusters flower buds starting to stretch

In my experience, deer will eat just about anything if they’re hungry enough. We have a lot of deer in our woods, and outside the fence the only two things they never ever seem to eat are Pieris and hay-scented fern (Dennstaedtia punctilobula). I’ve seen them eat the flowers off daffodils, they eat skunk cabbage foliage, they munch through the startling spiky needles of the blue spruces in the depths of a snowy winter.

And now it seems they eat hellebores – though I wonder how they felt afterwards.

Oh - and there were some wonderful Arum italicum forms from Ellen Hornig’s own breeding work at Seneca Hill, masses of sparkling cyclamen (like those on the right) and some very very pretty hepaticas – and a whole nursery coming to life after the winter. Check it out here.

White Bird of Paradise

Yes, yes… I worked in the Palm House at Kew so I should know this plant. Well, perhaps I did water it every day, but that was a long long time ago - perhaps I’ve just forgotten it. But coming across it in the new catalog from Stokes Tropicals that just arrived it really looked amazing. Strelitzia nicolai, it’s called and it’s a huge, 20ft, white-flowered version of the familiar orange Bird of Paradise. Likes the same conditions, too, so shouldn’t be too tricky to grow – if you have a conservatory big enough or if you garden in zone 10… Florida perhaps.

Then I found it on the University of British Columbia’s exceptional Botany Photo of the Day blog – with some startling pictures.

And all I can say is this:
1. Go check it out on Botany Photo of the Day blog here
2. If you’re in the US you can order a plant from Stokes Tropicals here
3. If you’re in the UK, the RHS PlantFinder lists a good number of mail order stockists here

Enough said.

Great new plants for shade gardens

Great news for shade gardeners. Three superb new evergreen epimediums bred in Britain and launched there last year are now available in the US for the first time – from Wayside Gardens. Believe me, they’re gorgeous – they really impressed me when I saw them in England last spring - and they’re tough too, hardy to zone 5. The pictures, I'm afarid, do not reveal how amazingly prolific they are. They, and more newcomers, are also available in Britain this spring from Wildside Nursery (by mail order) and Foxgrove Plants (for callers to the nursery and at RHS and Alpine Garden Society flower shows).

Bred by Robin White of Blackthorn Nursery, who created the Party Dress double hellebores, all are hybrids between evergreen species introduced from China relatively recently and chosen from thousands of seedlings resulting from carefully controlled pollinations.

All three have been chosen because they hold their flowers well clear of the foliage, they have an extended flowering season so that if the first flowers are frosted you’ll still get a good display, and all three also have attractively coloured spring leaves. They were originally created in the early 1990s and have proved their worth over many years before finally being introduced.

‘Amber Queen’ (above left), in amber peach and yellow, is a hybrid between 'Caramel', a form of E. wushanense collected in China by the celebrated Japanese botanist Mikinori Ogisu, and another of his finds, E. flavum. The result is a clump-forming plant with exquisite flowers carried in great numbers. ‘Amber Queen’ is available from Wayside Gardens in the US, and from Wildside Nursery and Foxgrove Plants in the UK.

‘Fire Dragon’, in yellow and purple, is a prolific hybrid between E. davidii, introduced in 1985 by British botanist Martyn Rix, and E. leptorrhizum, another of Mikinori Ogisu’s introductions. ‘Fire Dragon’ is available from Wayside Gardens in the US, and from Wildside Nursery and Foxgrove Plants in the UK.

‘Pink Elf’, in pink and purple, is an impressively prolific and strongly spreading ground covering hybrid between E. leptorrhizum and probably E. pubescens, another introduction by Mikinori Ogisu. ‘Pink Elf’is available from Wayside Gardens in the US, and from Wildside Nursery and Foxgrove Plants in the UK.

They may look delicate but these exquisite shade lovers are tough – just be sure they’re never parched and never waterlogged. I’m really looking forward to trying them here in my ever expanding Pennsylvania shade garden.

In Britain, Wildside Nursery and Foxgrove Plants will also have stock of three new introductions from Robin White and these should be available in North America later this year. I’ll let you know when.

Nurseries without websites

I've just been noting that some US nurseries are going totally digital and no longer publishing printed catalogs at all, or are ceasing to do so soon. But some of the best nurseries in Britain - like Marchants Hardy Plants whose Sedum 'Marchants Best Red' (left) was such a star in the recent RHS sedum trial - are in the opposite position: they don’t have websites (though two do have email).

Personally, I’m sure they’re missing out on good business and also, of course, continuing to use natural resources unnecessarily. These nurseries are some of the best in the country, with well-chosen, well-grown, correctly named plants, But in general small nurseries are not thriving in Britain – and it’s hard for any small business, perhaps run by just one or two people, to spend time and resources on making such a change when business is not booming.

So let’s hear it for these four fine nurseries, all run by very small but dedicated teams. Please buy their excellent plants! (Though they don’t, I’m afraid, send plants to North America.)

Goldbrook Plants – hosta specialists
Hoxne, Eye, Suffolk, IP21 5AN
Tel/Fax: 01379 668770
Full details in the RHS Nursery Finder here

Marchants Hardy Plants – snowdrops and choice perennials including grasses
2 Marchants Cottages, Mill Lane, Laughton, East Sussex, BN8 6AJ
Tel/Fax: 01323 811737
Email
Full details in the RHS Nursery Finder here

Phoenix Perennial Plants – perennials, especially late flowering types, including grasses
Paice Lane, Medstead, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 5PR
Tel: 01420 560695
Fax: 01420 563640
Full details in the RHS Nursery Finder here

Wildside Nursery – woodland plants and especially epimediums
Green Lane, Buckland Monachorum, Nr Yelverton, Devon, PL20 7NP
Tel: 01822 855755
Email
Full details in the RHS Nursery Finder here

Another great nursery abandons print and goes electronic

In my last post I mentioned a couple of US nurseries which no longer produce a print catalog. Well, I forgot to mention that for Seneca Hill Perennials their 2008 catalog, being mailed in the middle of this month, will be their last printed version.

Nursery owner Ellen Hornig says on the front of the Seneca Hill Perennials website: “Global warming forces us to examine our resource use, and this is one arena in which it can be cut. We will be redesigning the website somewhat to compensate for the lack of a catalog, including adding… an archive wherein inactive entries can be kept for reference purposes.” Fine by me, just send me an email whenever the site is updated so I can take a look.

There are over 130 new additions to the catalog this year including a lovely new form of one of the best of all shade lovers, Primula sieboldii. Selected at the nursery, ‘Seneca Star’ (left) has huge, prettily dissected deep pink flowers with a white central star. Looks gorgeous. You can see all this year's newcomers here.

But don’t let one little thing that Ellen says about going totally electronic pass you by, it’s important: she’ll be adding a web archive of plants she no longer sells. This is great news! – not only for gardeners who bought plants from her years ago and need to check up on what she says about them. But for researchers, plant historians, horticultural botanists, other nurseries who might now be selling the plants - and for garden writers like me - this will develop into an invaluable resource. I wish other nurseries, especially those who introduce new and rare plants, would do the same. Thanks Ellen.

Note to British nurseries: Seneca Hill Perennials have raised and introduced some excellent new plants but most are not yet available in Britain. They would welcome the opportunity to exchange new plants with similar British nurseries.

Transatlantic nursery news

Four pieces of interesting nursery news – two from North America and two from Britain.

Rick Lupp’s Mount Tahoma nursery in Washington State has announced the end of print catalogs. This is one of the country’s little treasures featuring thoughtfully chosen rock plants and woodlanders with, in particular, a huge range of primulas of all kinds, including the superb ’Early Girl’ (left), an increasing range of epimediums and some species from China never seen in gardens before – including a creeping honeysuckle.

So from now on the website does it all. This will bring a saving to Rick in terms of time and cost – and of course it will save paper too. The 2008 list has just gone live. You can find Rick Lupp’s Mt Tahoma Nursery website here.

Altogether more glitzy and more dramatic in its look (and launching recently with a website and no print catalog), GreatGardenPlants.com features mainly new and recent introductions – of all kinds from vines to ferns. With respected breeders and growers TerraNova Nurseries and Walters Gardens in the background, they list 46 daylilies (including ’Spiritual Corridor’, right), 39 hibiscus, 13 echinaceas, two lovely new brunneras and lots more. Take a look at the GreatGardens.com website.

Meanwhile, back in Britain…

Blackthorn Nursery has announced that after this coming spring season it will be closing to retail sales. This is the nursery that created ‘Party Dress’, the first double hellebores in a host of colours, and has bred superb new daphnes and epimediums, phygelius and other plants. After 32 years running the nursery Robin and Sue White just want a quieter life and to concentrate on the garden and breeding new plants.

And finally a not-quite-brand-new nursery in the English Cotswolds – FuturePrimitive Plants. I only came across this nursery recently but I’ll be stopping by this year. Concentrating on new and recent introductions, hardy orchids and a range of aspidistras to grow outside are special features – along with the new orange ‘Tiki Torch’ echinacea and variegated Bergenia ‘Solar Flare’ (left). You’ll find the FuturePrimitive Plants website here.

Dahlia ‘Ragged Robin’ – have you seen a healthy one?

Back in the spring I asked you to look out for a healthy virus-free plant of this wonderful dahlia, Dahlia 'Ragged Robin' – it was bred in Britain at Avon Bulbs and sold by Heronswood in the US (but no longer). All the plants everywhere now seem to be virused and the breeder is looking for a healthy plant from which to propagate clean stock. You can find out more in the original post. Leave a comment on this page or email the nursery if you have news of healthy plants of Dahlia ‘Ragged Robin’.

Echinacea price shock

I was in a nursery in New Jersey the other day, just browsing around,… imagine my shock. Echinacea ‘Twilight’ – the price tag said $27.99! (That’s about £14.) OK… the two-stem plant was in flower (though past its best) in a big pot… but that seems an extraordinary price even in an affluent NJ suburb. The same nursery was just taking delivery of a batch of Lythrum salicaria ‘The Rocket – that’s a pink flowered form of… purple loosestrife.

The day before I’d been at a much smaller nursery, Catskill Perennials, where their echinaceas, in slightly smaller pots, were priced at $11 (c£5.50). That’s more like it. And the only purple loosestrife in that part of the world is in the roadside ditches.

Summer Garden Party in Northamptonshire

Next Saturday I’ll be at the Summer Garden Party at Foxtail Lilly, Tracey Mathieson’s delightful country garden and barn shop in Oundle, Northamptonshire.

Featured last year in The Garden, the Royal Horticultural Society’s monthly magazine, the relaxed but imaginative planting style has attracted great attention and the shop, set in a 19th century barn, combines an interesting selection of plants with bouquets of cut flowers, many of which are grown on site. Vintage gardenalia and small antiques are also on sale alongside crafts made by local craftspeople and a choice selection of Tracey’s favourite gardening books.

Come along on Saturday 28 July, from 2-5pm, to enjoy the garden, relax with drinks and light refreshments, look round the shop and perhaps win a free signed copy of my RHS Encyclopedia of Perennials.

I hope to see you there.

Read my previous post on this lovely garden here
Download the article on the garden at Foxtail Lilly here
See exactly where Foxtail Lilly is located here
Check out the Foxtail-Lilly website here