New Plants

Hostas

We all know of a cat that is just too fat, one that is disproportionately wide. (Our Percy qualifies.) The perfectly named Hosta ‘Fat Cat’ ($20.00) is a bright yellow hosta with very wide, round leaves. It’s like a smaller, brighter ‘Sum and Substance’ with great texture and puckering. Another good yellow, but with the scarier name of ‘The Shining’ ($15.00), is a solid gold version of ‘Cathedral Windows’ with excellent texture and fragrant flowers.

If you like ‘em big, check out ‘Final Summation’ ($30.00), a brightly colored sport of ‘Sum and Substance’. The giant, slightly cupped leaves are gold with wide, dark green margins. Several green margined sports of ‘Sum and Substance’ have been introduced over the years, but this one is the best yet. Another monster is ‘Empress Wu’, never to be seen again.

One of our favorite hostas is ‘Rainforest Sunrise’, a somewhat smaller hosta with yellow/orange centers and dark green margins. The new ‘Tropical Storm’ ($20.00) is a reverse sport, with green centers and bright gold margins. Throw in the yellow version, ‘Maui Buttercups’, and you have a great combination planting of smaller, sister hostas. And if you want to add a blue, ‘Deep Blue Sea’ is a great blue with cupped, puckered leaves, and it’s about the same size as these other three.

Daylilies

‘Buttered Popcorn’ ($15.00) is a rebloomer with a large 6-inch flower of buttery yellow. It produces many blooms per 32-inch scape, and it reblooms reliably. White daylilies are always in demand. We now have Stamile’s ‘Wedding Band’ ($15.00), with creamy white blooms edged in yellow and a green throat, making for a beautiful color combination.

We have a few new offerings from Bob Ellison. ‘Crazy for Love’ ($25.00) is a stunning red. ‘Lemon Pucker’ ($15.00) is a bright yellow with heavily ruffled, darker yellow edges. ‘Watermelon Lollipop’ ($15.00) is intense rose with a white midrib. It is nicely ruffled and has a high bud count.

Perennials

We have at least 75 new varieties of perennials this year, including several good shade plants. Astilbe ‘Burgundy Red’ has unusual, deep burgundy red buds and flowers that bloom for a long time, and is one of four new Astilbes. Cimicifuga has been gaining in popularity, and the new ‘Chocoholic’ will only add to that because of its shorter, 24”-26” size and fragrant pinkish white flowers. Heuchera ‘Electra’ sports gold to chartreuse foliage with blood red veins, and should be an exciting addition to our already great line of Coral Bells. Two new Ligularias sound interesting. ‘Midnight Lady’ has very dark purple-black foliage and yellow daisy-like flowers. ‘Osiris Café Noir’ is a dwarf variety, at only 20”-24”, with dark purple foliage that turns bronze-green in summer and spikes of yellow flowers. Tricyrtis ‘Taipei Silk’ is a new Toad Lily with larger and more flowers than other varieties.

New perennials for sun include Geranium ‘Perfect Storm’, with long-blooming magenta pink blooms with black centers and veins atop low spreading mounds. Echinacea ‘Hot Papaya’ is a double orange pompom, and ‘Meringue’ is a double white pompom. The names ‘Mac and Cheese’ and ‘Tomato Soup’ tell the color of two other new Coneflowers. Monarda ‘Pardon My Purple’ forms a petite clump of glossy green foliage topped with dark purple flowers. The Candy Series of garden phlox are being touted as being brightly flowered, long-blooming, fragrant, more compact at 24”, and very resistant to mildew. Names include ‘Bubblegum Pink’, Coral Crème Drop’, and ‘Cotton Candy’. Another plant with a candy name is Stachys ‘Pink Cotton Candy’, forming a clump of green, textured leaves with showy spikes of rose purple flowers held above the foliage in early summer.

Trees and Shrubs

This area of our business just keeps growing, due in large part to my inability to resist anything that looks new and interesting. I went on a whirlwind three-day tour of nurseries out in Oregon this fall and couldn’t help but order a bunch of new plants from some nurseries with whom we had never dealt before. One of them, Bizon Nursery, has a blue spruce called ‘Bizon Blue’ that holds its powder blue color even as the needles age, unlike most blue spruces, whose needles turn from powder blue to dark blue-green during the season.

We’ve always liked the spreading Juniper ‘Daub’s Frosted’, but Bizon has some gorgeous ‘Daub’s Frosted’ grafted on a standard. They really caught my eye, as did three dwarf Serbian Spruces (Picea omorika) with stunning silvery blue-green color. ‘Expansa’ is a low growing spreader, only 1’ tall. ‘Minima’ is a tight, small globe. And ‘Nana’ forms a beautiful globe when young. It tries to grow into a squat pyramid as it ages, but I think it can be kept globose with a little judicious pruning.

In Oregon, I also discovered a variegated Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia) called ‘Jack Frost’, which has beautiful ferny green foliage with snow white dots. It grows a little slower and smaller than the species. And I found a very unusual Ginkgo called ‘Jade Butterflies’, which grows in a dwarf, shrubby form expected to be 4’-5’ tall and wide. There are several fantastic yellow evergreens out in Oregon that just make you drool, but most of them don’t do well here. One that should is an Arborvitae (Thuja) called ‘Yellow Ribbon’, a semi-dwarf, upright form with yellow new growth in the spring, growing 5’-10’ tall and 2’-3’ wide.

New deciduous trees include a Black Gum (Nyssa sylvatica) by the name of ‘Wildfire’ because of its burgundy new foliage in spring and outstanding red and orange fall color. A dwarf Pear (Pyrus calleryana) by the name of ‘Jack’ is an excellent smaller form, growing only 10’-15’ tall and 6’-10’ wide, covered with white flowers in spring, and with good reddish fall color.

The world of Hydrangeas has really taken some giant strides. ‘Invincibelle Spirit’ is an arborescens type that is essentially a pink flowered form of ‘Annabelle’, and it reblooms until frost! ‘Vanilla Strawberry’ is a paniculata type with huge white flowers that turn pink, then red, and hold their color. New blooms keep the multi-color show going into fall, and red stems add winter interest.

I can hardly wait to try out the new, reblooming Lilac (Syringa) called ‘Bloomerang Purple’. It is a dwarf, shrub form growing 4’-5’ tall, and its fragrant flowers appear not only in spring, but again in midsummer, continuing until frost.

Printable 2010 New Plants Price List

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