What Do We Mean When We Talk About Native Plants?

Phlox paniculata ‘Jeana’, 2024 Perennial Plant of the Year If you’ve spent any time in recent years reading books or magazines about gardening, you will be aware of the growing interest in native plants. Regular readers of our catalog will likely have a general understanding of what this term refers to and why a gardener might seek out native plants. Because this is a complicated topic and is often over-simplified in bite-sized media, we’d like to briefly discuss the ways in which native plants figure in what we do at White Flower Farm.  What Is a Native Plant? The definition…

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Preplanned Gardens

How to Choose a Preplanned Garden

One of the qualities that distinguishes great gardens from those created by amateurs or novices is the way in which plants are combined. Because both science and art are involved, and because not everyone has the time or inclination for…

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Lessons from the Lloyd Border

When WWII veteran and Wye College horticulture graduate Christopher Lloyd returned home as a young man to Great Dixter, the 57-acre English estate where he and his five siblings had been raised, he began what would become decades of experimentation…

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10 Factoids About Iris

From ancient Greek mythology to 19th-century art to today’s scientific analysis of anthocyanins, the breadth of Iris topics may surprise you. Here are 10 facts that we hope round out your view of these fascinating plants. 1 Iris is the…

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