Late Fall Colour.

November 29th & two plants in the Garden are still showing good Fall Colour:

Nothofagus antartica 'Puget Pillar'

Liquidambar styraciflua 'Slender Silhouette'

Air Pots™

In early November we depotted and washed out some liners grown in Airpots™ to compare them to the liners grown in regular pots. As we expected from previous trials the liners grown in Airpots™ not only had more roots but the roots were of a much better structure with few if any circling roots & a great many more root tips. You can see the differences between the 2 root systems here.

Davidia Seed

[11/13/09] Today we also picked all the seed off our
Davidia involucrata 'Sonoma'

Stewartia seed sowing

Its been a while (well a long time) since we posted to this blog, it's been a busy Summer!! This weekend we sowed all our different Stewartia seed picked from the many Stewartia in our garden.

Survivors

So only 2 of our many Callistemon survived the winter of 2008/09. Even the fabled Woodlanders clone succumbed to the cold, snow & ice. Callistemon sieberi however survived unscathed & doesn't even have any damaged foliage. The other survivor was Callistemon citrinus 'Splendens' - OK I cheated on this one it was in a pot in the greenhouse :^)..

Silverbells & Snowbells

Tis the season for Silverbells & Snowbells. Two of the best in our garden this week are Stryax obassia & Halesia diptera var. magniflora.

One of a kind!

This is a seedling Acer palmatum selected from a batch of seedlings collected from Acer palmatum 'Linearlobum'. It just celebrated it's 6th birthday.

New Grafts begining to grow.

The Wisterias that we grafted back in February in March are now begining to grow. Often the flower buds shoot out first as you can see here with this double flowered Black Dragon.

Wisteria floribunda 'Mon Nishiki'

We have 2 variegated cultivars, Wisteria floribunda 'Mon Nishiki' & Wisteria sinensis 'Variegata' Sometimes one looks better, sometimes the other! At the moment 'Mon Nishiki looks the best.

Two Cool Dove Trees

Davidia involucrata 'Sonoma' (right) is famous for flowering at a very young age. This brand new liner growing in an Airpot is just proving a point!!

Davidia involucrata 'Lady Sunshine' (below) is a new variegated cultivar of the Dove Tree.

Two Currants

These are 2 of our favorite Currants, the photo above doesn't do justice to Ribes sanguineum 'Brocklebankii' but it's a great plant! Below is Ribes sanguineum 'Variegatum', selected for the speckled variegation of it's leaves it also has in my opionion some of the best flowers.

Airpots

This year we are going to be growing some of our crops in the Superoots 1 liter Air Pot liner pot from the Caledonian Tree Company. We will be telling you more about these pots & their advantages in the coming weeks. More photos here.

Pinus contorta

I collected these seedlings of Pinus contorta from one of my favorite places, Elk Lake a few years ago.

Odds & Ends.....

Some plants you make money on, others are just toys :^)......

Clematis armandii

This is an unnamed pink selection of Clematis armandii flowering in our greenhouse this week.

Chiondoxa forbessi

The great blue flowers of
"Glory of the Snow".

More Hellebores!!

This is what last years Hellebore seedlings look like now.

Wisteria Grafting Continues

We are still pluging away at the Wisteria grafting. Here Chiyoko is putting newly grafted plants on our callus bed.

Hellebores Gallore.

Chiyoko has been busy trasplanting Hellebore seedlings & has a lot more to do! What we really want are double flowering forms like the one pictured above but not all the seedlings will be doubles so we have to grow them for 2 years until they flower & we can then divide them by colour & flower type.

Here's hoping for lots of doubles!

Wsiteria Grafting Begins

February 28th 2009

Our first day of Wisteria grafting, Chiyoko busy cutting up & preparing the rootstocks.

Stock Availability List

We spent some time this weekend adding some photos to our stock availability list. You can check it out here to see if there is anything you can't live without :^)..