Juniper Level Botanic Garden

We recently had a taxonomic eureka moment, when our wild collected bulb of Lycoris shaanxiensis came into flower. Although we have grown hundreds of bulbs, we received from the former Kaichen Nursery (Chen Yi) of China as Lycoris shaanxiense, not a single one of those ever turned out to be correctly identified. 99.99 % of everything we’ve seen sold as Ly...

Back in 2004, we noticed an odd fern in our spore pots of Dryopteris tokyoensis, so we set it aside for planting in the garden. After several years in the ground, we concluded that it seemed to be a hybrid of the Asian Dryopteris tokyoensis and the North American Dryopteris ludoviciana…something we really didn’t think possible. Despite our skepticis...

Our native switch grass, Panicum virgatum is at the height of its popularity, but that’s getting ready to expand with the introduction of two unique new selections. Panicum virgatum ‘Blue Spear’, from plant breeder Hans Hansen of Walters Gardens, created an entirely new type of inflorescence, that he calls, fused panicles. This gives the grass a completely d...

We’ve written before about several of the new windmill palm hybrids that are becoming available thanks to crosses being made in Europe. One that has really impressed us are the hybrids with the silver-backed Trachycarpus princeps, and the dwarf, ...

After having the same personalized plate for over 45 years, it was finally time to turn our faded, unreadable tag to the Motor Vehicles office, in exchange for a new one, which recently arrived. In NC, much of the income from personalized plates goes to an array of efforts including highway beautification and plant preservation. How about your state? How many other gardeners ...