Catalog Introduction

Time to Swiftly Taylor your Garden

Digital Catalog now online.

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Image of Plant Delights Nursery 2024 Spring Sales Catalog

 

This is unquestionably the era of ornamental gardening, and we can think of no better time for a horticultural upgrade for your home garden. Sadly, many people still look at their yards as utilitarian time sucks instead of being one of the most healthy, relaxing, and environmentally friendly pastimes you’ll ever find. We hope you’ll consider enhancing your landscape this year as well as engaging other friends and neighbors in the world of serious gardening. 

At PDN/JLBG, last year proved organizationally challenging, as several key staff members, all who made significant contributions during their tenures here, moved on to other career endeavors. We sincerely thank all our former and current staff members for their amazing contributions and support. We’ve made several new hires and other organizational changes to streamline the business and look forward to another productive and stellar year. 

We also continue full speed with our efforts to make sure Juniper Level Botanic Garden has a sustainable financial footing for the future, when Tony becomes either compostable or simply unable to continue at the same frenetic pace. 

Thanks to your generosity, we saw substantial growth in the JLBG Preservation Endowment at NC State last year, ending 2023 at 3.2 million. This includes a couple of significant life estate gifts from long time customers. Although we originally set a $17 million goal, inflation has upped the number to $20 million. This means we’ve raised 16% of our goal. While the JLBG/PDN property is fully preserved by NC State, the endowment will be the main source of funds for garden maintenance and staffing. 

To secure an additional funding stream, we are pleased to announce the start of our JLBG Membership Program. Memberships will allow us to continue to hire and retain topflight horticultural talent and expand both our education and plant preservation efforts. Those who join this year will be forever recognized as Juniper Level Botanic Garden founding members. You can find out more about other benefits of being a garden member at JLBG.org. We’re also hosting our first Endowment fundraising event on Friday, June 14, when we will open Anita and Tony’s private garden for tours. It’s our hope this will be an annual event. More details can be found at our newly updated JLBG.org website. 

2023 set a record for Open Nursery and Garden attendance! It was great to introduce the garden to so many first-time attendees, and we look forward to even more visitors this year. 

We have added nearly 100 new plants from our trials to the 2024 catalog and we hope you find a few things you can’t live without. We’ve added fourteen new agaves for 2024, many of which have been in the production pipeline for well over a decade. Most of these are our own introductions, being commercially offered for the first time. These include the oversized Agave bracteosa ‘Octopussy’, the white-centered Agave ‘Bareback Rider’, the yellow-edged Agave montana ‘Tiffany’, the dusty, white- centered Agave ovatifolia ‘Awakening Angel’, the fast-growing Agave ‘Blue Arrows’, the giant Agave ‘Grey Gator’, and the stunningly variegated Agave ‘Bright Lights’. Other gems were propagated from specialty collectors worldwide. 

First cousins of agaves are hostas, and our special new intros include some truly exceptional creations. From our own breeding, comes Hosta ‘Flower Show’, ‘Simply Divine’, and ‘Thumb Blueline’. From the amazing work of Hans Hansen, comes Hosta ‘Blue Ruffles’, ‘Blue Twister’, ‘Echo the Sun’, ‘Hope Springs Eternal’, ‘Love Story’, ‘Party Streamers’, ‘Seasons in the Sun’, and ‘Wild Imagination’. These don’t simply represent new hosta names, but are truly breakthrough, distinctive improvements in the genus Hosta. 

In addition to our hosta selection, we’ve added several woodland treasures that start with the diminutive, colorful-foliaged Pinellia cordata ‘Yamazaki’. If you live in a zone where you can grow aspidistras outdoors, we’ve added four new exceptional selections, three of which you won’t find anywhere else, including two of the first documented hybrids in the genus. Two unique new asarum made the list, from our world’s largest collection. Also, from the world’s largest trillium collection comes Trillium stamineum ‘Power Walker’, an amazingly fast-spreading selection. If you like hardy orchids, wait until you see the variegated leaf and flower of the hardy Cymbidium goeringii ‘Xueshanbiancao’. 

For this year, we’ve added two more of our own amazing epimedium introductions, Epimedium ‘Golden Angels’ and ‘Spring Sunrise’. These new epimediums are almost unimaginable improvements on the epimediums of 20 years earlier. We’ve also added two new farfugiums from our selection and breeding work. If you are a fan of hardy gesneriads, be sure to check out the early fall flowering Hemiboea ‘Jiangxi Bells’, shared by the great folks at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. For those who enjoy toad lilies, two new incredible selections made the final catalog cut. 

For those with sun gardens, we’ve added three exceptional new amsonias, with two of these being PDN exclusives. Our amazing work with the native genus, Baptisia, continues this year with our introduction of Baptisia ‘Purple Reign’ and ‘Lavender Candles’. If you have a sunny rock garden that provides room for smaller plants, check out both Bigelowia nuttallii, as well as our Viola pedata ‘Blue Bibb’, which is unlike any selection of that species we’ve ever seen for flower power and flower size. On a slightly larger scale, Yucca ‘Mellow Yellow’ is a superb new Hans Hansen selection of our native Yucca x recurvifolia that’s not to be missed. A great companion plant and color echo is the dazzling dryland-lover Saliva ‘Rose Bicolor’. Also, not to be missed is Agastache ‘Pink Pearl’, the new gold standard created by using some of the most fragrant, pollinator friendly native species. 

If you have a spot that stays moist, check out Phyla ‘Ramble On’…our selection of the superb native groundcover that flowers for months on end. Liatris resinosa ‘American Voices’ is another native wetland species that’s virtually unknown in gardens. Then of course, we can’t forget the amazing hair- like Carex howei ‘Willow the Wisp’…our incredible new selection of the native bog-loving species. Our pitcher plant addition for 2024 is Sarracenia ‘Blood Orange’…a selection we prize for both its pitchers and floral show. 

As you can see our passion for great native perennials continues. We’re pretty certain that we now have the most diverse offering of native perennials in the country. That said, it saddens us greatly that people continue to promote patently false statements that native plants are both better adapted, and preferred/required by pollinators. Even our NC Department of the Environment got in the act last year, by publicly promoting these oft-repeated myths. These plants are simply exceptional plants which should be grown for that reason alone…along with their ex-situ conservation value. Just because a plant is “native” currently in an area doesn’t have any relation to its adaptability to all sites in that region. People also forget that “native” is a place in time, not a place in location. Hint…there are no “native” North American Homo sapiens. 

As always, we love our geophytes (bulbs, tubers, and corms), especially those that will never grace the pages of a Dutch bulb catalog. This year, that includes six new surprise lilies, from our worlds’ largest collection. Perhaps the showiest geophyte is the dazzling Colocasia ‘Redemption’ from Kentucky’s Brian Williams. We promise to scrub the drool off the foliage before shipment. Zingiber mioga ‘Lushan Gold’ is a breakthrough in the edimental woodland ginger that you won’t want to miss. 

Although Sauromatum venosum isn’t new, all plants in commerce come from India. We are pleased to share a new cultivar, ‘Lake Tana’, which hails from the Southern end of its range in Ethiopia. We’ve long enjoyed asphodels, but the Syrian Asphodeline damascena just takes the cake for “Wow”! For years, we lusted to grow nerines outdoors, but met with constant failure until we trialed Nerine angustifolia…check it out. We are finally able to share a lust-worthy rain lily from our friends at the former Yucca Do Nursery. Zephyranthes ‘Buttery Billowy Blowout’ is the first yellow flowered selection from the famous Labuffa strain. Also, three new hymenocallis (spider lilies) from our world class collection made the catalog. 

We’ll stop here, so you can start turning the pages. Remember that there are more than twice as many plants on-line as in print, and we’ll continue to add more every few weeks in spring. Have a great gardening year, and thanks so much for your support!

As always…happy gardening! 

-tony and anita