Widespread in the wild, scarcely known in cultivation: Rosa sericea
Rosa sericea is probably the most widespread rose species in Asia, both geographically and in terms of altitude. It is found throughout the Himalaya from Nepal in the west across to SE Tibet and NE India in the east, into Burma and through Yunnan and Sichuan into central and southern China and north into Kansu and…
Is Hydrangea robusta taxonomy robust?
It was in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society in December 1858 that Hooker and Thompson described a new species of hydrangea they had discovered in Sikkim, in the temperate Himalaya, flowering in August of the previous year. They named this Hydrangea ‘robusta’, describing it as a small tree with strong branches – arbor parva, ramis…
Evergreen Summer Magnolias
Successive days in May 2026 with temperatures around 30C and an absence of rain caused concern about damage to many of our plants, but in general we found ill-effects were mitigated by the deep rains of late winter which left the soil at full field capacity, and our policy of heavily mulching all young plants…
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White House Farm Garden and Arboretum 