Joyelle West
06.12.2023 - 09:25 / finegardening.com
Japanese holly fern
Cyrtomium falcatum
Zones: 6–10
Size: 1 to 2 feet tall and 2 to 3 feet wide
Conditions: Partial to full shade; moist to average, well-drained soil
Native range: Asia
This fern will never win any races, as it grows very slowly up here in the north. Consistently evergreen in warmer zones, a well-placed Japanese holly fern will blaze through winter unscathed in the Midwest. If it gets nipped by Jack Frost, though, you can just snip it clean and pretend that didn’t happen. I’ve had great luck growing it in raised beds with good drainage and up against a house where there is some residual heat and protection from wind. On the underside of the holly-like fronds are spore-producing structures called sori that will absolutely horrify anyone with trypophobia
(an aversion to the sight of irregular patterns of small holes or bumps).
‘Dark and Handsome’ hellebore
Helleborus ‘Dark and Handsome’
Zones: 4–9
Size: 18 to 24 inches tall and wide
Conditions: Partial to full shade; moist to dry soil
Native range: Europe, Asia
With their evergreen foliage and super-early blooms, hellebores make great “front door” plants for northern gardens; if you put them any farther away from the house, you might miss the show. When customers ask me to recommend shade garden plants, I usually suggest hellebores with cheerful colors, since the blooms of many varieties face downward under foliage and appear at a gloomy time of year. But in my own garden, give me ‘Dark and Handsome’ all day long. The smoky, double, 3-inch-wide flowers bloom for me before April. Those who grow this plant in warmer zones may have problems with rampant spreading, but that is a hardship I will never know.
‘Cobweb’ hens and chicks
Sempervivum
Most gardeners would agree that the best pastime for cold winter days is looking through seed and plant catalogs imagining the growing season to come. With that in mind, consider these four strong summer blooming perennials for the midwest when you are ordering plants in the coming weeks.
Some people are particular about the garden tools they use. Others take it less seriously and are content with the cheapest things they can find. I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m not one to waste money on overpriced brands, but I do want durable tools that last a good while. Just as important, they need to do the job and be up for the conditions under which I’ll be using them.
Tropical evergreen shrubs of the Verbena family can be a vibrant addition to any garden, offering a blend of lush foliage and vivid flowers.
Seed saving is the art of collecting the seed from your crop and using it in subsequent seasons to grow new plants. Even if you save only small quantities of a few crops, understanding more about the life cycle, breeding tendencies, and botany of your crops will help you manage and care for them more effectively.
Collaborative post
Tips for Growing Strawberry Geraniums Outdoors
From delicate wrist blooms to bold shoulder statements, these Best Chrysanthemum Tattoo Designs are more than just art. Read on and find out fantastic inks you can get on your skin if you’re a fan of mums.
White Christmas Cactus, £11.99 from Hortology
While some may be familiar with Japanese sacred lily (Rohdea japonica, Zones 6–10), Rohdea pachynema is an uncommon species that is indeed a Rohdea less traveled. Found only in the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, it is an intriguing member of the Asparagaceae family that is slowly becoming more available to gardeners. It was formerly known as Campylandra sinensis or C. pachynema, but recent DNA work has moved it into the genus Rohdea, whose name commemorates German botanist Michael Rohde. We can find no documented common name for this species, so we have dubbed it “yellow thread rohdea” since pachynema means “thick thread” (referring to the colored central stripe on the leaves).
Few plants generate more revulsion in the garden than junipers. The mere suggestion of planting one often musters a similar reaction to that of saying a dirty word. Maybe we’ve grown weary of their use as evergreen blobs in foundation plantings. Perhaps the thought of meticulously shearing them into the perfect shape sounds daunting (see pruning tips). It could be an early memory of an itchy rash from an up-close encounter with a juniper’s prickly branches. Or it could be boredom with the sea of creeping blue rug junipers (Juniperus horizontalis ‘Wiltonii’, Zones 3–9) planted in every big-box-store parking lot. Although junipers are a midcentury-modern garden staple, generations of gardeners have since decided they have had enough of these controversial conifers. While it’s easy to dismiss them for their deeply ingrained negative traits, junipers have many merits that make them worth reconsideration.
If you live in a place that gets a fair amount of snow, is it important to have evergreen perennials? For many years we have debated this question around our editorial planning table, and the staff falls into two camps: those who say that ever-green perennials aren’t just for regions that receive little to no snow, and those who see no point in spending money on a category of plants that might be buried out of sight for more than three months.