Not too many plants blossom in the middle of summer.  But the bottle brush buckeye is reliable shade tolerating plant.  Not only that but once established it manages with minimal watering.  If you have enough room this is a great plant.  Our gardens have two clusters of this shrub and it looks wonderful. Once you see the brushy white spikes of flowers you'll understand where the common name bottle brush  buckeye comes from.  Aesculus parviflora is one of several buckeye species including red buckeye and Ohio buckeye in our gardens ..read more

 The weather pattern seems to have changed to a hotter, wetter July.  At least for now the almost 3" of rain has spelled recovery for most of our gardens.  About the only plant that did not suffer was the native prickly pear cactus.  It produced a hundred or so bright glossy yellow flowers, a good candidate for the Friday Fabulous flower, although today is the 4th of July, a Tuesday.  There are some sand prairies over by the Rivers, and this cactus can be quite abundant in many of those.   ..read more

 Any way you want to slice it our gardens are suffering through a drought.  Areas that would be called "lawn" are brown and crispy, and they would burn should anyone drop a match. Our lily/fish pond is down some 6-10 inches.  Some trees must be watered or else they would die.  A Kousa dogwood is struggling, but not much else is newly planted. So TPP is dragging hoses around to give the most sensitive plants water.  And you can hardly blame bun-buns for eating plants that are best at keeping themselves alive.  The bird bath and garden fountain are very popular with ..read more

 As many of TPP's reader know Magnolia's and nagnoliid flowers are a great favorite.  The collection  includes two species of big-leafed magnolia, M. tripetala and M. megaphylla (var. aschii).  Both have leaves that are routinely more than 20 inches long.  The Asche magnolia also has really big flowers 9-10 inches across and it flowers when quite small and young if polar vortexes stay away.   Here's the flower some 9" across and it was about 4' above the ground.  This one gets some protection by growing fairly close to our house.  It is the Ashe va ..read more

 Sometime every spring right around the first of April, our garden's "lawn" turns blue.  This is caused by several thousand Scilla siberica bulbs.  It's a pretty remarkable sight.  It just takes a few decades to multiple. You can't walk with out stepping on them.  New neighbors are quite surprised at how blue the "lawn" becomes ..read more

 It's the first week of March and a few things do flower this early, but not very many native plants.  One of the cutest is the snow Trillium, T. nivale.  Flowering early is  quite usual, and so it pokes up through the leaf litter.  This is also the smallest Trillium at about 3 inches tall and each whorl about as wide. it is easy to overlook, which TTP did for years until an early scouting trip surprised this botanist.  Now it grows in our native plant gardens so its easy to watch for.  This is one plant with 3 aerial shoots, a whorl of three leaves and a f ..read more

 It's the third week of February, the high temperature will be in the 40s and the weather is presently a thunder storm.  Very much unlike usual winter weather, so no surprise that snowdrops and winter aconite are in flower, along with early crocus and witch hazel. Never even touched our little snow thrower and that's good because Mrs. Phactor has her new electric vehicle plugged in there now.  Snowdrops usually  flower near the end Feb or the first week of March. The whole yard turns Scillla blue by the second week of March. But except for a couple of artic blasts, the wint ..read more

 Wow! 2023!  Who would have thunk it?  TTP's family is not known for their longevity, so it is quite a surprise to find myself still around and still fairly healthy.  Wealthy and wise were out for quite a while now.  Very cold weather came early (-11F) and it will be interesting to see what plants found that too cold, maybe the Ashe magnolia or the plum yews.  But we will always hope for the best.  Indoor plants are doing well, an azalea, a mistletoe cactus (Hatoria), and the queen's tears (Billbergia nutans), have been the subject of blogs before.   ..read more

 October is not a great month for flowering, but a few plants flower in the fall.  This little perennial is generally hard to raise, at least for us (it keeps dying) but the right combination of shade and water seem to be keeping it happy.  It's commonly called a toad lily (a species of Tricyrtis).  The perianth is decorated with pinky-purplly spots as is the three branched style. It stands about 12" tall with about 1" diam flowers.  It is not a native, but also is not invasive.  It started flowering on the 5th of October.   ..read more

 Orchids are funny, and a number of even botanists are obsessed by them.  It is one of the largest families of flowering plants.  Among the species of orchids found in here in Lincolnland they are described as "rare", "very rare", "uncommon", and one such plant has shown up in our gardens.   js The upper image shows the whole plant, all seven inches or it from a small whorl of slender basal leaves its terminal spike of white flowers.  The lower image show the flowers a bit bigger, all of 2-3 mm long.  This a Ladie' tresses orchid, the genus Spiranthes proba ..read more