Description
ARCHIVED
Note: This is a plant not currently for sale. This is an archive page preserved for informational use.
Up-facing blue-violet bells in early spring emerge from foliage decorated with silky hairs.
Up-facing blue-violet bells in early spring emerge from foliage decorated with silky hairs.
ARCHIVED
Note: This is a plant not currently for sale. This is an archive page preserved for informational use.
Up-facing blue-violet bells in early spring emerge from foliage decorated with silky hairs.
$12.75/bareroot
BuyShowy, white to pinkish inflorescences summer thru fall. Richard Darke, grass guru, describes this as “One of the most striking hardy fountain grasses. Low growing, compact and exceptionally floriferous … Blooms over an unusually long period from late June through October”
Size: 2' x 2'
Care: sun in well-drained soil or moist well-drained soil. Deer resistant and drought tolerant.
Native: central & SW Asia
Awards: Elisabeth Carey Miller Botanical Garden Great Plant Picks
The plant is named for its soft inflorescences; Latin penna and seta mean feather-bristle. This species collected before 1821.
$12.75/bareroot
BuyEarly to late summer spikes of single platters – mixed colors. The classic cottage garden flower.
Size: 5-8' x 24"
Care: Sun in moist well-drained to well-drained soil. Drought tolerant
Native: West Asia
Wildlife Value: Butterfly plant, host for Painted Lady butterflies
Cultivated in China for thousands of years where it symbolized the passing of time. They cooked the leaves for a vegetable and also ate the buds. Transported from Middle East to Europe by the Crusaders and introduced to England by the 1400’s. Culpepper, a 17th century English herbalist, claimed the plant could be used to cure ailments of the “belly, Stone, Reins, Kidneys, Bladder, Coughs, Shortness of Breath, Wheesing, … the King’s Evil,, Kernels, Chin-cough, Wounds, Bruises, Falls. . . (and) Sun-burning.” Both single and double forms grew in England by the time of Parkinson (1629). Parkinson said they came “in many and sundry colours.” John Winthrop Jr. introduced the 1st hollyhock to the New World in the 1630’s.
OUT OF STOCK
Truest of blue flowers from summer through fall. Do you need to know anything else?
Reseeding annual in colder zones.
Size: 8” x 8”
Care: sun in well-drained to moist well-drained soil
Native: So. Africa.
Awards: Plant Select® Central Rocky Mountain region
Collected and introduced to Europe in 1794 by von Thunberg (1743-1828). Carl Peter von Thunberg, student of Linnaeus at Uppsala University in Sweden, made three trips to the Cape of Good Hope 1772-1775 where he collected about 1000 new species, Java and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 1777 and 15 months in Japan where he befriended local doctors who gave him hundreds of plants new to Western horticulture. He succeeded Linnaeus as professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala and King Gustav beknighted him. Young Cape forget-me-not plants were eaten as a vegetable, Annals of the South African Museum, 1898. Louise Beebe Wilder loved this plant, effusing, “One of the prettiest (blue annuals) is the Cape Forget-me-not. Not one of its cerulean family boasts a purer blue and its summer-long period of bloom and indifference to drought make it a really valuable annual. It has also a sturdy habit of growth and sowing its hardy seeds freely it does its best to become a permanent resident.” Robinson called it “Remarkably fine…” The Garden 1873. The name Anchusa from anchousa paint used on skin.
OUT OF STOCK
Bushy plants bear showy, red-purple pea-like blooms age to rich purple in March-June. Ephemeral, dying back in August when you can cut it back. Spring gem.
Size: 12” x 12”
Care: sun in north to shade in south, moist well-drained soil. Drought tolerant once established
Native: No. Europe - Siberia
Awards: Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit, Elisabeth Carey Miller Botanical Garden Great Plant Picks
Introduced to gardens before 1629. Parkinson called it “Blew Everlasting Pease.”