nora harlow|perennials

It might seem that hellebores are for expert gardeners and collectors only and a few of them are. The rest may look delicate, fussy, and difficult to grow but are quite amenable to cultivation in a fairly wide range of soils and situations. Hellebores, especially species but also many of the hundreds of cultivars, lend a connoisseur’s cachet to gardens in summer-dry parts of the world. Helleborus orientalis, beautiful in its own right, is the main parent of many hybrids If you are a newcomer to hellebores, there are several things it might be helpful to know.

It is perhaps not surprising that bulbines and bulbinellas are often mistaken for one another. Both form clumps or rosettes of grasslike or straplike basal leaves and both bear tiny, star-shaped, yellow, orange, or white flowers in cylindrical or cone-shaped clusters atop tall stems. Most of both genera are native to South Africa with a few bulbines from Australia and a few bulbinellas from New Zealand. Bulbine latifolia has succulent leaves resembling an aloe without spines There are, however, significant differences between the two that may affect how they are used in the garden. Almost all bulbines

Another great plant for habitat gardens, milkweeds (Asclepias species) support more than the critically endangered monarch butterfly. As most gardeners know, monarch caterpillars feed only on milkweeds, which contain chemicals that are toxic or unpalatable to most other insects, birds, and mammals. Monarch caterpillars, along with the juveniles of several other insects, are able to metabolize and sequester these chemicals, in the process making themselves toxic or unpalatable to predators. Asclepias speciosa, showy milkweed, native to western North America Hundreds of other insects visit milkweed flowers for their high-quality, prolific, readily accessible nectar, including native bees, honey bees,

If you're looking for a perennial that feeds many butterflies, birds, and bees and serves as a host plant for many caterpillars, you can't do much better than a native solidago. With one or more species native to every state in the United States and much of Canada, the genus is high on the list of "keystone" plants for every ecoregion in North America. Painted lady (Vanessa cardui) butterflies on solidago With the common name of goldenrod, solidagos could be confused with half a dozen other plants that share the name but do not have the same stellar

Some plants just naturally bring out the child in all of us, and lion's tail (Leonotis leonurus) is surely one of them. The whorled clusters of softly woolly yet spiky-looking, neon orange flowers can look almost cartoonish --a caricature of flowers-- spaced out along emphatically upright, six- or even eight-foot stems. Leonotis leonurus in full bloom in the San Francisco Botanical Garden Of the nine to twelve or more recognized species of Leonotis, only lion's tail, a perennial or subshrub endemic to eastern South Africa, is reliably available in nurseries. Lion's ear (L. nepetifolia), an annual native from