Albert's Greenhouse

After a short delay due to a shipping mixup, my much-anticipated secondary spring order arrived from Plant Delights last week. I may grouse a bit about this place, as they are sometimes a little scattered, and I'm not sure about the value they provide, but I will say that any place that is able to extract $140 from me to ship only eight tissue cultured plants across the country is probably doing something right.
They pack well, they ship well, their documents are all in order so they don't get held up at the California border, and the plants are well-grown. Of course, I'm willing to risk doing business with companies for which this is not the case - but in the case of Plant Delights, they also have stuff that they themselves collected, and which is therefore not available elsewhere.

The plant order ( a bunch of Asarums, plus some other stuff ) is mostly destined to go in my new shade garden, dug out of the bricks covering a little-used corner of the backyard. There is very little shade on my property, other than the seasonal shade under our street tree, so the many attractive shade perennials which are available have never before had a home. In the ever-present spirit of wanting what one cannot have, the shade garden idea was born.

So far, it's the home of a few Clivias, a couple Arisaema and not a small number of the Asarums, or wild gingers, which I really do like for their little hidden flowers, nice scent and generally evergreen leaves.