Fall Availability
After another hot summer, the rain returned and brought with it some nice cooler temperatures. I know we can always have some cooking hot days well into October, so false fall is a real thing here in the NW now. To me the tinge of fall in the air seems a bit more solid than it has in past years. To that end, we are working on getting the fall alpine and plant availability for shipping online in the next couple of weeks. The bulb list will be up with the remainder of the bulbs available through next week and then you will see the proverbial “website under construction” as we get the fall plants up. This falls offering is by far the best we have ever had at this season, so get ready for some garden goodies. We have some fantastic Campanula’s, a load of great dwarf Aquilegia species from the Colorado mountains that really appreciate fall planting to get the roots in so they can bloom prolifically next year. I have focused a bit on cushion plants as well, with some wonderful tidy little buns to back your crevice or trough with. Some xeric ferns will be going into the mix, as well as a great selection of tough and hardy alpines for any garden!
If you can make it to the Oregon Country September 26th, we will be vending plants in person at the Hardy Plant Society’s Fall Plant Fest! This wonderful event it is packed with loads of other vendors as well as some great speakers at a wonderful venue and you can shop the plants in person and find fantastic deals! Click here for the details.
HPSO Fall Plant Fest September 26th
We will be back in person at this fall classic! Come and check out our booth, we will have whatever bulbs left at a discount as well as some super choice things that we don’t ship, like some of our super rare alpine plants, like Dionysia!
Introducing Dionysia ‘Pink Lemonade’
This is a new introduction of Dionysia from illahe rare plants, ‘Pink Lemonade’ is an D. aretiodes hybrid with fantastic pink rimmed, yellow centered flowers. The cushions share the same white farina as the parents, but this hybrid has turned out to be a tough and good grower in our greenhouses, so we are ready to share it with you!
We have been working hard to grow the wonderful little cushion primroses, Dionysia for some time now, the are not easy, but well worth the reward of successful cultivation. If you don’t know this genus, i’m not surprised as they are exceedingly rare in cultivation and even more so it seems in the United States. Named by Austrian Botanist Eduard Fenzl in 1843, these extremely unusual little cushion-forming primroses, growing in the mountains of the Middle East. They form dense, almost hemispherical cushions on exposed limestone and other rocky surfaces. Today the genus extends from southeastern Türkiye through Iran and Afghanistan to western Pakistan and Oman, with around 68 accepted species. A few years ago we scored an extremely lucky find in a seed packet that was cleaned out of Kenton Seth garage seed refrigerator, check out his wonderful book: The Crevice Garden here
Cushion plants ready for planting!
This falls list will have some great selections of cushion plants, I think we are up to about 6 different selections of Silene acaulis, as well as a number of Raoulia, Androsace, and a ton of great Draba species to really make that early spring garden pop!
Dionysia ready for planting!
Notice the ample drainage, provided by generous helpings of pumice, calcined clay and crushed tufa. A necessity for these tough chasmophytic cave dwellers from the mountains of the middle East.
So stay tuned for the Fall catalog it will be out in the next couple of weeks with loads of great plants. If you can come and see us at the HPSO Fall sale where we will have some super rare stuff that isn’t offered in the fall catalog including some choice zeric/sun ferns and tons of other great plants. The bulb catalog will be online for only a short period more so if you want anything be sure to get your order in ASAP.
Cheers,
Mark and the Illahe Crew
Post script:
Did you get your tariff refund yet? I’m still waiting for mine. This year I jumped through all the hoops to export plants to our great friends to the north of us in Canada. As a small business struggling to make it in the billionaire economy I was super excited about the opportunity to expand into a new market where I now loads of people appreciate great rock garden plants. After all, that is the capitalist American dream right? Start with something small, build it up, scale it, expand it, find new markets and exploit them…..errr….. I mean meet the demand. Along comes dumpy’s war sending fuel prices and everything in the greenhouse/nursery industry skyrocketing, and to add insult to an injured America the doubling down on a trade war with our neighbor to the north. We should be building strong ties and trade partnerships with our closest neighbors, not isolating behind walls designed to only allow the flow of money into the hands of billionaires. I read that while we, the American public paid the price of dumb shits illegal tariffs, he refunded them to the billionaire corporation class. How much more can we trickle the money upwards into the insatiable greedy gullets of the monopolistic corporate ruling class before the bottom is so fully eroded the tower topples? I had to cancel plans to truck plants to Canada thanks to El Hefe’s short sided trade war. I’m not alone, you can hear it rumbling from the mega farms of the Midwest who have lost huge overseas markets in commodities like soybeans, to the everyday market gardener packing up some kale and cucumbers to sell in their local community and struggling as they watch the cost of fertilizer, fuel, electricity, everything skyrocket causing the bottom line to drop to below subsistence levels. Absolutely, no question in my mind the entire dumpy family are Russian agents hell bent on destroying America while they pocket fast cash grabs, I read that he has made 6.5 billion dollars in the few years that most of have lost any hope in the future. I’m still waiting for those tariff refunds that the checks and balances system determined were illegal in the first place. I’m still waiting for my government to open more markets for my products instead of closing them down one by one. I’m still waiting for the billionaire class to contribute to society.