Description
In summer blue, violet or white bells, excellent at front of border.
In summer blue, violet or white bells
In summer blue, violet or white bells, excellent at front of border.
$12.75/bareroot
BuyBalloon shaped buds opening to white bells in mid-summer to early fall.
Size: 24" x 12"
Care: Full sun to part shade in moist well-drained soil. Heat and drought tolerant. Deadhead for rebloom.
Native: Eastern Asia
Wildlife Value: attracts hummingbirds, bees & butterflies
Awards: England's Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit.
Platycodon is Greek from platys meaning “broad” and kodon meaning “bell”, referring to the shape of the flower. Cultivated in China for hundreds of years where it is called Jie-geng. Chinese used the root boiled to cure a chill in the stomach. Mentioned in Man’yoshu, a Japanese anthology of poems written in the 8th century. German botanist Johann Gmelin (1709-1755) collected P. grandiflorus in Siberia in 1754. Gmelin’s Siberian mission, sponsored by Catherine the Great, took 10 years and nearly killed him. Gmelin introduced it to European garden cultivation by 1782. Robert Fortune found the white form in a nursery near Shanghai and sent it to England in 1845.
OUT OF STOCK
“…the berries are the thing – pewter in color, with a texture like those Fourth of July sparklers of childhood memory, they have a delicious fragrance.” Allen Lacy.
Size: 9’ x 10’
Care: sun in any soil
Native: Canada to Southeastern U.S. No pruning needed but can be pruned at any time of year, if desired.
Wildlife Value: Berries relished by chickadees, red-bellied woodpeckers, swallows, Titmouse, catbirds, bluebirds, Northern flicker & yellow-rumped warblers. Bayberry thickets also provide nesting sites for songbirds, offering excellent protection from predators.
Size: Fragrant leaves used for potpourri, abundant berries used to make candles. Good road-side plant, salt tolerant.
Probably 1st collected for gardens by John Bartram (1699-1776). Offered for sale in Bartram Garden’s 1783 Broadside, America’s 1st plant catalog. In 1800’s considered “very ornamental in the shrubbery.”
OUT OF STOCK
Outfacing, white, waxy cup-shaped flowers resembling single roses in late winter, evergreen leaves.
Size: 12-20” x 12”
Care: part shade in moist well-drained soil
Native: rocky places in Europe
Awards: Received Royal Horticultural Society Award of Merit.
The name Helleborus is Greek from hellein meaning “to kill” and bora meaning “food” referring to the plant’s poisonous qualities if placed in food. This species is ancient – known as long ago as 300 BC in Greece where it “purged and cured the mad or melancholicke daughters of Praetus with the roots thereof.” (Parkinson, 1629) Grown in the Eichstätt Garden, the garden of Johann Konrad von Gemmingen, prince bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria, c. 1600. In Middle Ages petals thrown on floor to drive out evil and ward off power of witches. English herbalist John Gerard (1545-1612) strangely recommended it for curing poisoned animals. Sorcerers made themselves invisible by tossing the powdered plant in the air.
OUT OF STOCK
Briliant orange with purple spots, turks-cap type lily blooming in late summer to early fall
Size: 10’ x 12”
Care: shade to sun in moist, acidic soil
Native: from VT to Fl & west to Mississippi River, incl. Wisconsin
Lilium was named for the Greek word for smooth, polished referring to its leaves. Collected before 1762. Sold in America’s 1st plant catalog, Bartram’s Broadside, 1783. L.H. Bailey (1913): “The most magnificent and showy of native North American species, well worthy of extensive cultivation.” Found growing in moist meadows from Massachusetts to Indiana and Alabama. In 1665 John Rea called it the “Virginia Martagon,” In 1738 colonial botanist John Bartram sent it to his “brothers of the spade” in London where it caused a sensation. A challenge to grow, it demands well-drained, acid soil and plenty of moisture.