Friday, April 27, 2012

Berberis replicata


One of my favorite Berberis that are flowering in the garden at the moment.

Not a fairies' hair!


Though it looks like Acer palmatum Fairy Hair this is a chance seedling that we selected 9 years ago from another cultivar in the A. palmatum linearlobum group. Don't worry we wont be propagating it or calling it Fairy Hair II :^)..

Ribes sanguineum 'Brocklebankii'



The lovely yellow foliage of this cultivar is not enhanced by the pink flowers, it looks it's best when the flowers are done!

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Ulmus glabra 'Camperdownii'


The Camperdown Elm is an old Cultivar, in it's day it commanded a very high price among the Victorian Gardening Elite! It's still a great plant today.

Podocarpus lawrencei - Blue Form


We picked up this Blue Form of the Mountain Plumpine from Cistus Nursery a few years ago & it's turned out to be a great garden plant so we thought we should make some cuttings of it.

Monday, April 9, 2012

The HPSO Plant Sale

The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon's Spring Plant Sale is a fixture on most plant nuts calendars. Small specialty plant vendors selling plants from all over the world, the latest & greatest new cultivars as well as the truly obscure! We came away with a box of new treasures that included everything from a few miniature daffodils, a yellow leaved Corylopsis & a new form of Banksia integrifolia that may be hardy enough for us to try growing.




Little & Large

Two photos from last Friday, first a new graft of Picea abies 'Pusch'. It's not going to be in production but a friend shared a few scions with me so I had graft them up!


At the other end of the scale, for the first time we have Spring flowers on our Musa bajoo. Normally I let these die back to ground level each year but last Winter I put 2 in a cold greenhouse for the winter & while the leaves didn't survive the stems did. A flower in the Spring means we should get some (inedible) but cool looking bananas! Normally when they have to come up from ground level each year we don't get flowers until October which are then quickly frozen off.



Wednesday, April 4, 2012

About time!


The Paeonia lutea that we sowed in 2010 has decided to germinate after all!

Beggars can't be choosers!


This Spring we were given 5 scions of Acer palmatum 'Hupps Dwarf'. The scion wood was small even for this cultivar! We had to make the graft cut on 4 & 5 year old wood but we did get 1 of them to take!