Delightful plants in North Carolina

Lycoris straminea 'Buttermint'

 I am currently on a lecture tour for the North American Rock Garden Society, which will take me up and down the East Coast of the United States. Opportunities for posting may be erratic and infrequent.

For the past few days I've been based in Raleigh, North Carolina, enjoying the horticultural pleasures of this area. On Wednesday a visit to AJ Bullard, of Mt Olive, introduced me to several interesting new fruits and was followed by an afternoon at the remarkable JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, whose eponymous founder set it up as a trialling and distribution centre for new plants for North Carolinan gardens, a role in which it continues. Yesterday brought a visit to a garden and plant collection that never fails to thrill, Tony Avent's Plant Delights Nursery and Juniper Level Botanical Gardens. It is packed with treasures, both new and familiar, and the focus of extraordinary efforts to bred and select new plants. A fuller post about 'PDN' will follow, but today is Friday, so I must go to New Jersey.

Pueraria trilobata 'Sherman's Revenge' - a splendid variegated form of the dreaded kudzu, scourge of the South.