Yesterday we visited Hillsborough, NC and a friend of ours allowed us to thin some of the garden where she stays. This is a very established garden loaded with all kind of shade loving plants. We filled the back of our little Scion EB.
As you can see we dug up 12 hellebores of which she says they are whites, pinks and red mostly. I replaced the scented Ginger Lilly I lost in our huge renovation. We also got several columbines, two big chunks of Solomon's Seal that the fall had turned orange. There is also this very cool stripy arrowroot. There was also a pink turtlehead and a peony. My favorite is the Cyclamen, managed to get 2 plants of it.
It gets even better they came over and helped us plant the new plants on a very gray day and all found places in our garden.
I also borrowed a book about a local Hillsborough garden called "Montrose Life in a Garden" by Nancy Goodwin. Goodwin ran a local nursery in the mid 70s up to the mid 80s and she was very much into hellebores and cyclamens. I'd be willing to bet a lot of these plants came from Montrose. The book is a good read that takes you into the garden starting in January and ends in December, I'm into April already!
While gathering compost Meg found this Brown Snake, Storeria dekayi curled up on a hickory leaf next to the compost bin. These tiny harmless snakes eat slugs you have to love them! Brown Snakes rarely get bigger than 15 inches all the ones we have found here have been less than a foot long. While planting the new columbines Meg also found a Worm Snake another tiny slug eater yeah!
