Mediterranean plants

Globs of Globularia

Globularia is a genus of small, rock garden-sized plants in the Plantaginaceae family, with a native distribution centered around Mediterranean Europe. I admired these during our 2012 Balkan expedition, but it wasn’t until we constructed our crevice garden empire, that we really began to have much success with the dryland plants in our wet, humid

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Desperate Aroids – The adventures of Phallicity

The spring garden at JLBG has a number of phallic moments if you’re lucky enough to catch them. Here are a few of our favorites. Below is a color echo we created, using Pig’s Butt Arum (Helicodiceros muscivorus) and Salvia x nemorosa. We’re sure you’ll want to recommend this combination for everyone in your HOA.

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Spiny is as Spinosus Does

In 60 years of gardening, I’ve yet to seen a nursery that offers Acanthus spinosus, who actually has the correct plant. 100% of everything in the commercial trade is actually a hybrid of Acanthus hungaricus and A. spinosus, which looks nothing like the true species. Even authoritative on-line reference sites which should know better, all

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Hacking Characias

If you’ve driven through the any of the Mediterranean countries in spring, you are undoubtedly familiar with the common Mediterranean spurge, Euphorbia characias (ker-ack-iss). For years, I admired this in virtually every English garden book, but always failed in my attempts to keep it alive in our garden. Years later, it finally hit me what

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Up and at ’em in Winter

Several plants emerge in the fall/winter season…some native, and others from far away Mediterranean climates. One of the most unusual plants we grow is the pig’s butt arum, Helicodiceros muscivorus. Depending on the location of the original population on one of the Mediterranean islands, it can emerge in our climate as late as February or

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Arisarum, not Arisaema

A first cousin to the better known aroid, arisaema is the lesser known aroid, arisarum. While arisaema has a distribution that is primarily North American and Asian, arisarum is primarily European. We planted our first arisarums back in 1994, and since then have tried quite a few and killed quite a few. The best species

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Precious Metals…Investing in Silver

We have been fascinated with hardy cyclamen since the 1960s, but in recent years have spent a bit of time isolating some of the best silver-leaf variants that showed up in our seed pots and getting these established in the garden. These silver leaf oddities can be found in the wild, although they are fairly

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Arum match.com

We are always interested in checking out the offspring, when plants in the garden have unexpected romantic rendezvous with their distant cousins…often when we least expect it. We have found arums tend to be quite promiscuous in the garden. While most offspring go to the great compost pile in the sky, a few are worthy

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