Juniper Level Botanic Garden

A Cool Forest Fire

If you want to create a colorful, fire-like spark in your woodland garden, without endangering your neighbors, there are few plants better than our 2021 introduction, …...

https://www.juniperlevelbotanicgarden.org/a-cool-forest-fire/

Philandering in the Swamp

We were recently checking our nursery swamp pink seedlings of Sabatia foliosa and to our surprise we found that most of the offspring looked nothing like the parent. Unbeknownst to us, our garden plant from which we gathered seed had been sexually involved with a nearby Sabatia kennedeyana. The resulting crop of plants were perfectly intermediate between both parents and have been now christened Sabatia x kenniosa 'Philandering Pink'. Since both parents are excellent garden plants we expect no less from their children.

https://www.juniperlevelbotanicgarden.org/philandering-in-the-swamp/

The Rejected Angel

One of our favorite new perennials of the last 15 years is Sanguisorba officinalis var. microcephala 'Little Angel', which is in full flower in the garden currently, as you can see in the photo below. This deciduous North American native groundcover should be in every garden, yet our sales for the last decade were quite poor. Our friends retired Dutch plant broker Luc Klinkhamer and Mr. Chang of Osco Gardens spotted this in 2009, growing in a Japanese nursery in the Aomori prefecture.

Each slowly enlarging clump of creamy-edged foliage matures at 7" tall x 15" wide and, starting for us in mid-June, the patches are topped with thumb-sized carmine flowers held just above the foliage. Our patch below is growing in average to moist soils, where it receives 4-6 hours of full sun each afternoon. Not only is it ornamentally attractive, but Sanguisorba officinalis is also used to reduce blood flow, heal burns, treat fevers, bleeding, diarrhea, peptic ulcers, eczema, and as an anti-fertility treatment. That's quite a plant. Hardiness is Zone 4a-8b.

Sanguisorba officinalis var. microcephala 'Little Angel'

https://www.juniperlevelbotanicgarden.org/the-rejected-angel/