I love your garden and gardening philosophy :-)

Now I'm off to look up Parrotia -- I want to replace a fringe tree that's struggling in my front yard ....

eta: okay, two varieties ... will one accept a higher pH, that's the issue with my yard....

Thanks nickel, that was a nice comment to wake up to. As the days grow shorter I've noticed the urge to get catch up sleep is stronger and stronger. I went to sleep at 8, was up for about 2.5 hours of "watch" during which I wrote that post, then went back to bed.

Here are a couple more plants I wanted to point out. Both of my Abies firmas had 'flowered' in spring for the first time but only one appears to have cones now. Is it possible that, although monoecious, a given plant may only produce male cones one year?e Anyhow here are the female cones, all > 20' high so no easy way to get them.

But you can see how this fir is always such a resplendent green. The closest equivalent among conifers is Picea abies, but those are definitely a darker, more somber shade of green and less "shiny" for lack of a better way of putting it. I thought the light in this picture captured the particular quality they have...even though I was just trying to record "first coning" for posterity! These were < 6' tall when purchased from Triple Oaks nursery in NJ in 2010. Both are getting close to 30'.

Also, having given up on locating the potentially root hardy Cobaea pringlei, which has been in the trade in the UK for decades, I decide to just grow some of the more common Cobaea scandens. I'm going to see if I can dig the root up and store it over winter.

And gardengal, thanks for your reply too. I heard about the big storms on the west coast. Unfortunate for your maples but fortunate for California, that needed the rain! It must have been especially nice for them after the prediction they would have a very late start to their wet season.

Agree, very nice, thanks for sharing. Additional thanks for once again expanding my vocabulary - "diaphanous" (light, delicate, and translucent). Nothing diaphanous here at this point in the season, just plenty of brown leaves to rake up. My Parrotia subaequalis is still pretty green though. I'm a bit skeptical that it will turn out to be as hardy as P. persica.

Thanks David, always interesting to read your posts. The color on that Amarine Tomoko is spectacular! WOW!

:)

Dee

arbordave - no harm in trying! FWIW, I have bought a select cultivar of P. persica, with plans to try to make a cross.

Nice stuff. Thanks for the tour.

tj

"I heard about the big storms on the west coast. Unfortunate for your maples but fortunate for California, that needed the rain!"

All good things seem to come with some drawbacks. Recent wildfires and just the volume of rain have resulted in devastating landslides as well as flooding.

My garden suddenly shrank reading this post, so may plants to want. Reality says I am a zone short and low on sun for a lot of things so I make do while still pushing the limits.

Camellia yes, but killed to the ground by a PV. Now back to four feet high and never a bloom since. Nerine no, but have Hippeastrum x johnsonii, Lycoris and an unknown crinum all which return every year and never bloom. Ginger, I remember those days.

Lovely photos! Envious of the gorgeous red coloring on some of your trees -- have had a lackluster fall color year here.

Nice colors David. Thanks for the tour. Parrotia subaequalis is endangered where it comes from in China. I guess now that it's in cultivation it won't be going extinct. I think Torreya taxifolia would be doable where you are. I know someone in Ohio growing it. Instead of exotic Amaryllis I'm contemplating growing the most hardy Hymenocallis species. You could too. This is the garden of the guy who introduced Parrotia subaequalis here. A friend of a friend. Ozzie has great taste. Small world. I really do appreciate the beauty of exotic flora, there's always some fascinating new species to encounter almost daily. Same thing with native flora, there are so many mind blowing native species. I do have good friends who are into growing the same plants you like to grow, gingers, Camellias, Japanese maples, and then some real crazy stuff. We have the love for plants in common.

Speaking of Torreya taxifolia, a second-year seedling found its way to me. I grew it in a pot the first year and planted it several weeks ago. Today it got a cage just to be safe. Deep green in a naked forest stands out. Now it just has to survive the winter outside by itself.

Very cool Christopher. Sadly, I live outside it's goldilocks zone.

Thanks for the nice comments. Jay, I have tried at least a couple Hymenocallis and not been able to establish them. I'm definitely not done trying though! Bulbs are overall reliable and trouble free, but at the same time can be SO baffling. Fritillaria have become a real annoyance/obsession for me...even ones considered growable on the east coast just will not work. It's actually quite infuriating. Or consider: I ordered a hybrid Narcissus from Bill he had crossed himself - it dutifully puts out a couple leaves every spring, has done so for years, so it hasn't died from cold...yet it never blooms! So odd. I have gotten paperwhites to establish and bloom on the same south slope where the Amarine 'Tomoko' is, so it shouldn't be a matter of 'hardiness'. I just don't know what's going on! Maybe I need to move it that south slope? So when I plant a Hymenocallis, which more than one local nursery sells, btw, in exactly where it is "supposed" to do well, I have no idea why it disappears!

Christopher don't be discouraged...based on pictures of your garden I've seen posted here, I have to wonder if at least some of those things are in too much shade? Dealing with shade is one of the most harrowing aspects of gardening, in my opinion. It's kind of a double edged sword in some cases - yes it keeps a plant from overheating, but, it's also denying them 'access to photosynthetic resources' LOL. Almost all plants _I consider interesting_ bwahaha, want some direct light...up to a point. Getting the balance right is the real challenge in some cases, and it can be 'multifactorial'. 'Cause there are questions of what time of year the light is to be evaluated, including sun angle. For example...the ginger above...I have a Abies pindrow that is due south of it by about 15 ft. I am starting to worry that, when the Abies pindrow starts vaunting skyward - it will cast too much winter shade, and allow the ginger to die out from the soil staying too frozen. The Taxodium hybrid loses its needles late, but it does lose them by January. So it's a south slope that gets almost full sun in winter...I think that's why that ginger could survive PV3. (The fir is about 10' tall it's the size where they can really start growing fast...that's when the Abies firmas did anyhow.) Put another way I'm not worried about the shade affecting the summer growth of the ginger because the high sun angle means it would still get plenty of light - just it making that part of the garden too cold in winter. OTOH I moved a big 'Gable's Hardy Decorum' rhododendron to a south slope, but still shaded after 1pm or so. This is a shade loving fortunea subsection rhodie. I was sure it would be in too much sun and would get foliar burn in summer, but instead it bloomed wwwwayyyyy more than it ever did in the prior, shadier spot. It can have so many flowers on it in spring you can hardly see the foliage. Lots of factors to consider, including one's local microclimate. I sorta picture the mountains of NC as having cloudier, wetter, foggier summers...I already know of course, they are cooler than the Piedmont.

PS - found an article about Kitty de Jong's Amarine hybrids here: http://www.madwithjoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Nerines1.pdf

EDIT - guessing you might have to click on the source URL first to get a cookie: https://www.madwithjoy.com

David, the link won't open.

One thing I have come to believe gardening at this elevation inside a deciduous forest is that a lot of so called shade plants do not really care for shade. As you suggest, it is more a matter of what is the minimum amount of direct sun they need to do well. I moved a bunch of Rodgersia to more sun this year because I was tired of them being so wimpy.

All my dwarf conifers and evergreens are on the sunniest slope I have which is not quite full sun. Plus they grow inside a summer tall flower meadow. I am truly pushing their tolerance on many levels. They certainly are not as robust as they could be, but are doing well enough and better as they gain enough size to get more sun in a summer meadow.

In the shadiest parts of the forest sections I am having good success introducing a number of native spring ephemerals like Trout Lily and trilliums that make for a good spring show with daffodils and the like.

I'm not discouraged so much as I am experimenting and a most excellent guide is the forest itself.

The high mountains of WNC are very much a wetter, cool summer climate and where I live closer to the TN border is distinctly wetter and cooler than the the mountains above town 25 miles away. The direction a slope faces is also a crucial factor in what will grow well there.

Thanks davidrt, nice pics. I know you're interested in larches -- had a Dunkeld larch grow to 20 ft in a hurry, then die in a hurry. Nearby Japanese larch grew fast and then started showing some low-branch death (I feared the same fate), but has hung on tho not growing as fast as before. Branches on it seem to leaf out in spring then new foliage dries up and branch dies, but only one or two low branches this year. Below, coloring well this year and shown w/a loblolly pine about the same age of 15 yrs. They're both in rather heavy, clayish soil w/a pretty high water table. There's a 2-needle Ponderosa pine behind the loblolly that's getting gradually eaten alive by needlecast. Just at the left edge you see longleaf pine needles.

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Article opens fine for me. And I found it very interesting. These are not common bulbs where I live and one of my great joys in autumn is driving by a municipal planting of nerines (they are underplanting paperbark maples!!) in full bloom. I'm sure there must be others in local gardens but just not very visible.

I also find it interesting that in one of the largest commercial bulb growing areas outside of the Netherlands, no one grows these commercially here. If you want 'em, you gotta mail order!

Since I dislike pink in my garden at all costs, I'm OK with that (have very little sun anyway) and can just appreciate that municipal planting whenever I chance to see it.

beng - yeah, I TOTALLY do not consider the Larix 100% reliable trees. In fact one I planted in a spot that gets the water from a gutter drain thinking, "surely this will be a goner, but this thing was cheap and I'm just experimenting". Well, it is now > 25' tall and I think if it can survive this hellish summer it can survive anything. That area cycled back and forth from bone dry to swamped with water. I can't remember where I got them that was a cheap source...oh wait I do...I think maybe the Dunkelds came from Musser Forest and the supposed pure kaempferis from the VA state tree nursery. Well, there must have been 5 of the latter and 8 of the former...and here I am left with 2. All the Dunkelds died w/in 3 years...they were absolutely crazy, a couple grew from 1' to 6' in a season! But then they could died of root rot practically overnight. So maybe I really have selected ones with better rot resistance. Hopefully. But I'm planning for the worse. The other, scarecrow one, for example, is shading some prized rhododendrons like 'Sky King', but I'm going to plant a 'back up' of a Taxodium ascendens nearby. NO worry about that dying of root rot! Besides deciduous conifers just make great garden trees, period, I've decided. Because the needles are such a non-event when they fall and they are clearly so storm resistant.

BTW this scene of your garden is idyllic. The longleaf pine is far from home in the mountains of MD, but looks happy enough!

Gardengal...not a huge fan of pink, myself, since it is kind of the 'lowest state of entropy' in flowering plants...BUT...there just aren't many plants that bloom the way Nerine/Amarines do, right up to the first freezes. It really gives a nice effect when the only other thing seen in 'regular gardens' are mums. Here at least, any Lycoris or Rhodophiala I've tried is much earlier. In the PNW, I would definitely try to get my hands on an 'Afterglow', which is a clear red N. bowdenii X sarniensis hybrid. Alas I 1) don't believe it would be hardy here, and 2) the one time I tried to order this from Cistus, it was the wrong color! It was a smoky pink, making me think it was another cross from that grex along the lines of 'Oberon'. Sean admitted to me there could have been a mix-up of some kind. In any case it tried to grow too much in the winter and died in the PVs. Which my plain bowdeniis survived only to be taken out by the slightly less cold but lacking snow cover PV3. (as I mentioned there was also the extenuating circumstances of have disturbed a plant known not to like disturbance LOL) I have a pure sarniensis that should be red, but it's proving incredibly hard to get it to bloom in a pot around here, which is not entirely unexpected. Summers probably too wet or something. I'm going to repot it in grit this year (possibly today) to try to 'reset' it. I bought it of course to try my hand at recreating the hybrids of Peter Smithers and Terry Jones, it would never be hardy here and is a challenge even in the PNW. Apparently a small # of such offspring inherit the ability to grow in summer from bowdenii, and thus have a chance of hardiness in ideal circumstances.

Because they were bred for the cut flower market, I will say that these hybrid Amarines are lasting longer in the garden than Amaryllis belladonna or Nerine bowdenii. The petals just sit there for days and days, seemingly waiting for something LOL. (and btw, they do grow in summer here; my hardiest Amaryllis of all is 'willing' to stay green until well INTO summer, which is probably a reason it is still alive after almost 10 years. That might be the trait I actually selected for. Where winters are a little too cold for these South Africans, they need to store carbohydrates in the summer instead. That was the tragedy of the Brunsvigia grandiflora I tried to grow. When I dug it up after 5 years in a pot and almost 10 in the garden...I was expecting a huge bulb. Nope. It was barely the size of a large gum ball! I realized it could simply never get to flowering size around here and tossed it! No point being sentimental. Now I am trying 10 seedlings to screen for strong summer growing...but it's not looking good. They might have all been collected in a very mild area. I often think, around the world, a lot of people doing seed collection DO NOT want to climb into the coldest mountain areas LOL)

Oh well gotta get going...already moved the most tender stuff into my garage, today's the day to do about 1/3 more of it...I'll let hardier stuff ride out one more mild spell we are supposed to have and then do the rest of the around Thanksgiving. On top of my ca. 250 potted plants, had to place an emergency "last call" order from Joy Creek, of course!

David, in my own garden I have replaced nerines with hesperantha, aka cape lily (formerly schizostylis). Not as showy for sure but a reliable late season bloomer that often produces flowers from early fall right through to the end of winter. I favor the intense red cultivar 'Torero' developed by my friend Urs at Edelweiss Perennials. And not as demanding of sunlight, either :-)

Wonderful pictures, love the color on the parrotia. I've seen them in gardens and was often underwhelmed but to see one in full color might change that opinion!

Thanks for all the replies, I enjoyed sharing my garden with all of you.

A few more to conclude. The larch goes a bit amber just before the needles drop:

the gray planar surface in the lower right are my solar panels LOL. They look like they are shaded by those Chilopsis branches, but they really aren't, it's just the angle. The Chilopsis always drops foliage early.

Here is a wonderfully crazy plant...Pseudocydonia sinensis. It's got a Dr. Seussian quality with such absurdly big fruits. In the distance is the 'Scented Snow' camellia, which has the largest flowers of any of my fall bloomers. The fir is my Abies recurvata, which is, functionally speaking, a slightly slower growing Abies firma with fragrant instead of non-fragrant needles. They are in the same Rushford grouping so closely related.

And what did I also spend my weekend doing? Repotting. These Camellias seedlings, my first from a deliberate cross, grew right through the styrofoam cup and into the ground! Of course can't get those cups anymore...wish I'd bought more when I had the chance.

davidrt, as far as larches go, might be an idea to get the native one, Tamarack, tho your area might be too warm & humid in the summer for it. Maryland says there's a state champ Tamarack in Owings Mills! I put in the web-link -- their website is almost unusable, but hopefully you'll see it.

https://airtable.com/shrSzNbW4ZnAyt6FA/tblES36NZkCeEl0Gd/viwKLvsrEMjjMTWNS/recV99gid8a3Zinbe?backgroundColor=green&viewControls=on

I'll paste an improved pic of it:

To add, a giant (my guess is European) larch in Bedford, PA, has looked bad in recent years, the foliage falling off in late summer. These pics are in spring.

Yeah I feel like native Tamarack is another plant like Abies fraseri...zillions of people have tried them at some point in the past and if they could grow in the Atlantic piedmont and lowlands, we would see them. I think Jason/"willows" who used to post here, has said they are found in gardens around the Great Lakes which would make sense. The Owings Mills tree is a super outlier it seems...I wonder if it could actually be a hybrid with something else.

AFAIK, the southernmost Larix decidua on the east coast was the very, very old one at Oatlands - probably the first larch I saw in my life when I drove out there at some time during my college years - but now even that has died. I think someone posted that news years ago. There are still a couple good ones at Longwood. With the Japanese climate being what it is, the Japanese was the most promising of the readily available species at that's why it has been grown as far south as Alabama. (can barely remember the fellow's name, but the head landscaper at U of Alabama used to post to GW ca. 15 years ago and talked about his successful with them.) But...what's really telling is that I studied detailed accessions at MOBOT, IIRC, and what I noticed was only the seed from Japan made long lasting durable plants there. So I suspect inbreeding has long been a problem with this species. As though the first Japanese larches in NA might have come from a handful of seeds collected in England, and those trees came from a handful of seeds collected in Japan. Alas, it seems Japan doesn't seem to have a "silverhill seeds" or "wildseeds tasmania" or "Alan Bradshaw Alplains" company willing to go hunt natives in difficult to reach areas. So you have to do what I did where you try a bunch and let the ones that will die, die as they may.

As for non-readily available species, a couple of the Chinese ones are promising which is why I'm trying whatever I can get. Sheffield Seeds is checking with their Chinese sources on L. mastersiana or L. potaninii for me (they were ever so kind as to find Dalbergia hupeana for me a few years ago!) so, fingers crossed...

Update - I had never thought to look up Larches in the USNA plant explorer...but the one Larix laricina they have is listed as "questionable" condition.

https://www.usna.usda.gov/abe/

For some places that test trees --

Dawes Arb tests alot of trees -- I typed in larix

https://dawesarb.arboretumexplorer.org/default.aspx

Also Lovett Pinetum

https://lovettpinetum.arboretumexplorer.org/

Some of these websites seem to have deteriorated -- used to be easy to find comments, reports on plant performance, pics, etc on them, but don't see that and/or very hard to use anymore.