My favorite mail order garden plant place is Plant Delights Nursery. They specialize in unusual plants. I like them so much, I have not unsubscribed from their mailing list, so I get emails from them every once in a while.
A couple of weeks ago, I got an email that sent me browsing through their site, and I discovered something very exciting: they were offering a winter hardy variety of caesalpinia! I couldn’t believe it!
Years ago, I had grown some caesalpinia pulcherrima plants from seeds I had collected in Phoenix. They actually bloomed, which I was very excited about. Plant delights was offering a species called caesalpinia gillesii. The flowers are yellow instead of red and orange. And the plant is winter hardy! A winter hardy bird of paradise shrub!
Of course I ordered it. And two other plants – hidden cone ginger ‘pink wonder’ and canna lily ‘chocolate sunrise’, both of which have luscious leaves and beautiful flowers.
They were delivered more than a week ago, but I finally planted them yesterday. My garden is full, so when I plant new plants, I have to remove old ones. In order to put in the caesalpinia, I removed a hydrangea bush. Sorry hydrangea, but you were underperforming.
It rained right as I was planting it. Perfect timing!
“Sorry, hydrangea. You were underpreforming.” Ha! You might be the most tactful, yet brutal garden evaluator ever. People should hire you to come into their gardens to make the tough choices.
Glad you got those in when you did!
Big news for you flower gardeners: http://pix11.com/2016/07/28/watch-live-corpse-flower-blooms-at-new-york-botanical-garden/ If you go today, you should be there at its maximum smelliness, too.
No extra charge for this tip BTW.
I saw that that was happening. I want to go up and see it, but the timing is weird. I had some plans this weekend. Maybe if it’s still open on Monday I’ll go…
I call plants like that (your evicted hydrangea) or ones I weed out by accident, “sacraficials”. HA You are so cool to know about the unusual plants!! I’ve always thought I would order things I see in catalogs but never do. I do try to buy the non typical ones when I do shop. Last year I bought some plants called a shrimp flower? They were awesome! I’d post a pic but don’t think I can on here? ha