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An early producing vine with small creamy-tan beans with a rich flavor and creamy texture.

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A popular dark-green standard bean, it produces heavy yields of tender and crisp flavorful pods.

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An heirloom bush variety that sets good yields early and produces well in most climates. A favorite of cooks for their bright yellow color and fine flavor.

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A prolific bushy variety with tan to creamy yellow dry beans. Originated from the Arikara nation from the Dakota Territory. It is the same variety collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition and grown by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. Good drought tolerance.

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A tall beautiful heirloom from Algeria with ornamental and red tinged edible stalks.

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Large tender and tasty purple chokes more suitable for warm season areas.

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A large ornamental heirloom from France with a fine flavor and pretty purple flower heads.

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An heirloom variety with pointed purple artichokes, which are more tender than the green types. Needs a mild climate.

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A great ornamental plant with beautiful blooms, it needs a long, mild growing season to produce artichokes.

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A rare variety, the white stalks can be eaten in a variety of ways: fried, sauteed, pickled, or eaten raw dipped in olive oil. The roots are also tasty and can be used in the same way as parsnips.
A beautiful ornamental plant.

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This color was bred into a group of hybrid garden delphiniums in the U.S. by Reinelt and Samuelson.

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Easy to grow and self seeding. Keep under control by cutting off the flower bracts which are quite spiny. Perennial and much more convenient than cilantro or coriander.

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'Portland' is one of the newer and taller Greigii tulips. It doesn't have the characteristic mottled foliage of most Greigii tulips.

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'Longfellow' is an unusually tall Greigii tulip.

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The white fruiting mulberry will produce seedless berries without a male tree close by. The berries are edible in either the green or white stage, and they are non-staining. This tree can also be maintained as a shrub because fruits are produced on new growth.

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Campanula raineri is native to the Bergamo region in northern Italy and into Switzerland where it inhabits limestone cliffs. The rootstock is woody and it spreads by fine runners. It forms tufts of small, gray, rhomboidal, finely dentate leaves that are stemless or virtually so. Flowering stems are 5 - 7.5 cm tall with narrow, crenate (with rounded teeth)-to-serrate leaves. The flowers are large and mostly solitary and are held upturned; shape varies from campanulate (bell-shaped) with reflexed rounded lobes, to infundibular (funnel-shaped) with pointed lobes; colour ranges from dark to lavender blue, with a dark blue (nearly black) spot at the base of the petals. The plant is deciduous. Grows well in cultivation in limestone substrates and screes.

Ref.: Dwarf Campanulas and Associated Genera, Graham Nicholls, 2006; Alpine Plants of Europe - A Gardener's Guide, Jim Jermyn, 2005.

Considered a very choice alpine, yet not necessarily difficult to grow. Photos of well-grown plants show flowers that appear virtually stemless.

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Campanula alpestris is native to the southwestern European Alps in screes and rock crevices at about 1400 to 2800 m elevation; substrates vary in lithology from mica schists and granites to limestone formations. It forms basal rosettes and mats of linear-to-lanceolate, entire, hairy gray leaves. Flower stems are 3 - 10 cm and bear outsized, 3 - 4.5 cm, cylindrical and campanulate bells that are held horizontally; flowers are usually single (occasionally double) and range from slate blue and lavender to purple. It is stoloniferous; not always easy in cultivation.

Ref.: Dwarf Campanulas and Associated Genera, Graham Nicholls, 2006; Alpine Plants of Europe - A Gardener's Guide, Jim Jermyn, 2005.

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Campanula shetleri is native to California in the Mount Shasta and Trinity Mountains areas, where it is usually found in shaded crevices in north-facing granite cliffs. Leaves are spatulate and serrated and form dense, low rosettes. The woody rhizomes prefer a cool root run. Flowering stems are 5 - 7 cm tall; flowers are small, bowl-shaped and range from white to gray blue to deep blue. It is small enough to be ideally suited to a trough.

Ref.: Dwarf Campanulas and Associated Genera, Graham Nicholls, 2006.

Can be challenging to grow, particularly in areas of winter wet.

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Campanula saxifraga is native to the northern Caucasus region, where it grows in rocky substrates in the sub-alpine to alpine zones. The root is thick and branched. Leaves are up to 7 cm long, occur in a basal rosette, and are glabrous and lanceolate-to-spatulate. Flower stems are erect and from 5 - 10 cm with linear-lanceolate, sessile leaves to 3 cm. Flowers are campanulate, 2-3 cm long, deep purple-blue, pendant to erect, with a white or light blue base. The plant is deciduous.

Ref.: Dwarf Campanulas and Associated Genera, Graham Nicholls, 2006.

This is an easy alpine for the rock garden, or for the front of the border.

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This is another easy Aroid to grow and it's readily available. It's always fun waiting for the inflorescence to pop up, a bizarre thing. The spadices I've seen are up to 18 inches long with the spathe not much shorter. The larger the tuber the larger the inflorescence...and leaf, which emerges several weeks later. This is supposed to be a stinker, which I suppose is correct given the number of flies it attracts. So far I've been growing them in dappled to full shade, as the literature suggests, but will try a few in a sunnier location this year.

The tuber shrinks considerably while producing the inflorescence and leaf and then a "new" tuber is produced. Fertile, well draining soil helps the process along. I add time release granules and occasionally use a water soluble as well. While I mulched several tubers in ground this winter, as usual I lifted most of them for dry storage in the basement. I find removing the loose "skin" on the bottom of the tuber, the left-over of the old tuber, reduces the risk of rot.

Lots of offsets are produced every year which I remove in the spring. I like to do this in the spring to minimize the number of scars on the parent tuber and hopefully the amount of water loss while it's dormant. Occasionally they'll reach flowering size in a single season.

While some growers report them as zone 6 hardy, I continue to lift most of my tubers in the fall. Many of the tubers I've left out overwinter the last few years have done fine however I wouldn't consider them reliably hardy in my climate.

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