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18 12, 2024

Babianas

2024-12-18T06:11:27-08:00Categories: Blog, perennials, Nora Harlow, bulbs|Tags: , , |

Babianas are deciduous, mostly winter-growing, spring-blooming, bulblike perennials native to southern Africa. Best massed in the garden, these are diminutive plants with an outsized floral effect. Growing naturally on well-drained silts and clays, granite-derived gravels, and rocky or sandy slopes and flats, they need sun, good drainage, fairly mild and moist winters, and a dry summer dormancy. Babiana framesii is native to the mountains of the winter-rainfall northwestern Cape, South Africa. Appearing in mid- to late fall or winter, usually with the first rains, babiana leaves are lance- to sword-shaped, linearly ribbed or corrugated, often softly or

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21 08, 2023

Amaryllis belladonna

2024-06-27T19:37:52-07:00Categories: Blog, Nora Harlow, bulbs|Tags: , |

Just as daffodils are the classic heralds of spring, the large, usually pink, trumpet-shaped flowers of Amaryllis belladonna are a sure sign of impending fall. Rising straight up on tall, sturdy, leafless stems, the blooms seem to challenge the very notion that the long, hot days of summer are drawing to a close. Amaryllis belladonna blooms in fall. Amaryllis belladonna is familiar to almost everyone whether they know it by name or not. Today these plants are most often seen abandoned along roadsides or as nostalgic remnants of older gardens. Hugely popular in gardens of the past, they

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3 02, 2022

Cultivated Varieties of Narcissus

2024-06-27T19:33:12-07:00Categories: Blog, Newsletters, Garden Plants, Nora Harlow, bulbs|Tags: , |

Almost everyone has a childhood memory of daffodils, that universal symbol of the end of winter and the arrival, once again, of spring. Fewer likely know that the plant with which most of us are familiar is one among dozens of species and thousands of registered cultivars of the genus Narcissus, hundreds of which are currently in commercial production. Narcissus ‘Grower’s Pride’ All narcissus are bulbs, all produce linear, strap-shaped, or sometimes rushlike basal leaves, and all bear flowers singly or in clusters of a few to many atop upright stems from six inches to two feet tall.

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6 11, 2021

Cyclamen for the Garden

2024-06-27T19:30:28-07:00Categories: perennials, Nora Harlow|Tags: , , |

Cyclamen in supermarkets, their plastic pots wrapped gaily in shiny paper, are as emblematic of winter as are poinsettias of Christmas and red roses of Valentine's Day. We can perhaps be forgiven for thinking of cyclamen as short-lived decorations to be discarded after flowering since that is how these charming little plants are usually marketed. Cyclamen hederifolium Supermarket cyclamen are mostly highly bred, frost-tender cultivars of Cyclamen persicum, a winter- and spring-flowering species native to the summer-dry eastern Mediterranean region. These cultivars are commonly grown as seasonal houseplants and are known as florists' cyclamen to distinguish them from

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17 08, 2021

Ornamental Alliums

2024-06-27T19:27:55-07:00Categories: Blog, Garden Plants, Nora Harlow|Tags: , , |

I've always loved the delicate little alliums native to the west coast of North America and have long ignored the larger Mediterranean and Asian species, especially their highly bred, look-at-me cultivars, as just too formal or artificial-looking for my laid-back, mostly summer-dry garden. Allium unifolium, native to coastal mountains from southern Oregon to northern Baja California But, in much the same way that yellow flowers come to be appreciated by maturing gardeners as the youthful obsession with pinks and lavenders gives way, plants once considered unsuitable may eventually be seen as welcome counterpoints. Allium aflatunense seedheads and

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