Catalog Introduction

Let The Games Begin!

2024 was a year of dramatic change at PDN/JLBG. Not only are Anita and I getting older and our telomeres wearing down, but we unfortunately lost two key managers (admin and gardens) last year. 2024 was also a year when customer purchasing habits changed dramatically and unexpectedly. Inflation pressures, economic concerns, and political uncertainty, along with a return to more pre-COVID travel patterns, all resulted in a significant decline in the retail consumer market. The only way for a business to survive such downturns is with a comparable cut in expenses. Unfortunately, this led to a mid-season 20% staff reduction, and a number of other significant cuts like closing our tissue culture lab, but thankfully, we survived, battered, but reasonably intact, as we embark on year 39.

Our new garden membership program was another key to survival. Last year was our first to offer garden memberships, and we can’t say thanks enough to those who joined in year one. This year, we have enhanced our membership program even further, having been accepted into the American Horticulture Society (AHS) reciprocal garden membership program. This benefit allows you to visit other gardens in the program at reduced or no admission. We are also extending the designation of “JLBG founding member” through the end of 2025. You can find out more about supporting our ex-situ plant conservation efforts and the preservation of JLBG at JLBG.org.

As a reminder, garden memberships funds go directly to support JLBG activities during the current year, and cannot be comingled with JLBG Endowment Funds, which are held and managed by NC State University, for use, once the University takes over the operation of PDN/JLBG. Our endowment goal in today’s dollars is $20 million, and so far, thanks to your amazing generosity, we have raised $5.2 million. While that’s great, we’ll need to pick up the pace, since Tony is aging faster than the endowment is growing.

You’ll notice a few other changes at PDN/JLBG this year. After a 25-year run of cartoon covers, where we have poked fun from a horticultural slant, at current events, we are retiring the cartoons due to the intense mental effort required on Tony’s part to dream these up. The catalog isn’t going away, only the direction of the covers. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Tony’s cousin, the award- winning cartoonist, Jack Pittman, for his incredible artwork and wicked sense of humor. Also, a belated thanks to his late friend, Nick Meglin (retired editor of Mad Magazine), who also contributed to several of our covers through the years.

For 2025, we’ve already reduced our shipping minimums in half. We hope this will help those who only want a smaller number of plants, while still allow us to cover our costs. Many of the items that were previously in the print catalog (i.e. hardiness map, staff directory, on site classes, etc. are now only located online, as we cost-save by trimming the catalog size.

Plant-wise, we’ve managed to assemble another amazing array of over 100 new plants for the spring catalog that we’ve never offered before, which includes over 40 new PDN/JLBG introductions.

New for this year include: three new lycoris (surprise lilies), four new ferns, five new century plants, five new epimediums, six new aroids, seven new hellebores, eight new rohdeas, and nine new hostas. For native plant enthusiasts, we’ve added nine new selections, covering several plant genera. Our new offerings don’t simply represent new plant names, they represent plants that we have studied and trialed and are the most unique and distinctive garden performers. Please remember that you’ll find more than twice the number of plants in print, in our online catalog at Plantdelights.com.

- tony and anita