Fraser’s Thimble Farm 175 Arbutus Rd. Salt Spring Island, B.C. V8K 1A3 Canada Ph/ Fax(250) 537-5788 Specializing in Native, Rare and Unusual Plants at www.thimblefarms.com Hours of Operation: Open 9am-4:30pm daily February 14th through August September through January open Tuesday through Saturday 9am-4:30pm Welcome to our 2017 catalogue. Generally, from necessity, we’re the type of people who stick to our own little world, growing our plants and minding our own business. As other gardeners are well aware, especially in spring, there’s not a lot of time for much else. With our recent water issues, we’ve had to come out of our comfort zone and focus on this huge issue. We’ve had to ask for help, primarily in the form of asking people to sign our petition. We now have over 2000 signatures between our online and physical petitions. Our topic of conversation for months has been water. We’ve been absolutely overwhelmed by your respone to our situation and it’s hard to adequately express our gratitude. We’d like to send a huge thank you to everybody for your support. It’s an ongoing issue and we’ll try to keep you updated on our facebook page. We’d especially like to thank the “Friends of Thimble Farms” for all your efforts on our behalf…we’re at a loss for words and get quite emotional just thinking about what you’ve done for us. As a result of our unusually cold winter, we’re a bit behind our winter schedule. It was hard to get much winter cleanup accomplished when we were frozen for several weeks (rare for us) and we won’t be able to determine how many plant losses we suffered until spring. Keep an eye on our ‘sold out’ page for anything that might become unavailable due to the cold weather as well as selling out. We’ll update that list from time to time as we become aware of those plants. Our first major event in 2017 will be ‘Helleborganza’(Hellebores), February 14th-March 31st . Helleborganza is our celebration of hellebores and other early blooming perennials including species snowdrops, flowering cherry trees, Adonis and double hepaticas to name a few. We are absolutely hellebore crazy and love to see the reaction of people (especially those new to hellebores) when they see the incredible diversity in both blooms and foliage at a time of year when we can all use more colour in our gardens. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the dedicated hellebore breeders around the world who have toiled over the last twenty odd years to bring us so many fine plants. The event will run over a month this year as every day more and more plants come into bloom. As we did last year, we will also offer an assortment of smaller and larger plant sizes. Please see our website, www.thimblefarms.com for mouth watering pictures. This year we have increased our numbers in the varieties and strains we believe have the best flower colour and put on the best show, like the Winter Jewels strains. Discounts and specials will be offered at the nursery at this time. Our next event, March 1st (?) – April 14th will be our Yukiwariso festival, a celebration of hepaticas. We would really like to encourage people to look at some of the images on our facebook page that show the incredible diversity in this group. Timing of this event is hard so in early-march we will post an update on the events pages as to the best time to visit on our facebookpage. I encourage those interested to look at our events page and our Japanese hepatica page. We would like to offer a PDF version of the catalogue via email as well as occasional emails about new offerings. If you would like to receive these emails please see the instructions on page two. New plants will be posted on our Facebook page as well as a new page on our web site called ‘New Plants’ before being posted in the main listing of the website. This way we will be able to post new plants throughout the year. There are new plant introductions scattered throughout the catalogue in almost every group of plants we grow. Please keep in mind we have thousands more plants available at the nursery (not listed on the website) including a huge selection of nursery stock, annuals, hanging baskets and one of the most diverse offerings of food producing plants anywhere. We would like to thank our customers, staff and suppliers for a great year and we’re looking forward to a fantastic 2017, Thank you, Richard and Nancy Fraser 1 Fraser’s Thimble Farm 175 Arbutus Rd. Salt Spring Island, B.C. V8K 1A3 Canada Ph/ Fax(250) 537-5788 Specializing in Native, Rare and Unusual Plants at www.thimblefarms.com Email list Get on our email list! If you would like to receive our catalogue as a pdf via email, please send an email to [email protected] with ‘pdf catalogue’ in the subject header. If you would like to receive periodic updates on the new plants available, email [email protected] with ‘New plants’ in the subject header. The advantages to being on the email list is that you will be alerted to additions to our plant offerings. By changing to an email and web site only catalogue we will be free to offer more plants to our customers more often. Thank you, Richard and Nancy Fraser Coming to the Nursery? Table of Contents Hardy Orchids ...............................................................................3 The fastest way is a fer ry from Ferns .............................................................................................8 Tsawwassen ( Near Vancouver) to Perennial Plants............................................................................16 Swartz Bay( Near Victoria) then Grasses and grass like plants and Bamboo ..................................72 Shrubs ..........................................................................................72 another from Swartz Bay to Fulford Vines ............................................................................................79 Harbour ( Salt Spring). This is not Helleborganza & all things Hellebore ...………………………...36 Deciduous and Evergreen Trees ..................................................80 your only option as there are three Mail Order Information .......................................................... 84-87 ferry routes to SaltSpring Island so Where is Thimble Farms? ........................................................ 1&2 for Ferry information phone What to do when my order arrives ...............................................79 1-888-223-3779 Or go to www.bcferries.com Table I. Hardiness Zones used in this catalogue. Temperatures are average winter lows. Fahrenheit Zone Celsius ___________________________________ below -50 1 below -45 -50 to -40 2 -45 to -40 -40 to -30 3 -40 to -34 -30 to -20 4 -34 to -29 -20 to -10 5 -29 to -23 -10 to 0 6 -23 to -17 0 to 10 7 -17 to -12 10 to 20 8 -12 to -7 20 to 30 9 -7 to -1 30 to 40 10 -1 to 5 2 Hardy Orchids turned out to be one of the more stunning and vigorous selections. Plant in Hardy Orchids full sun to part shade. This includes a diverse group of ground orchids from around the world. Bletilla `Penway Paris’ (striata x szetschuanica) ..................... $15.99ea Some of these groups are relatively easy to grow like the Bletilla and Z5-6. Rose purple petals, sepals and lip with white keels on lip. Pleiones and some are more challenging like the Cypripediums. The cultural requirements for most of these orchids are similar. They require Bletilla `Penway Princess’ (formosana x yunnanensis) $15.99ea well drained but moist soil when in active growth and excellent (almost Z5-6. Light rose pink sepals and petals, darker on the reverse. Lip spotted dry) drainage in the winter when dormant. Light shade or partial sun red and yellow with purple red margin. works well. Bletilla are more tolerant of varying soil conditions and require more sun than other species. Bletilla `Yokohama’ (striata x formosana) ............................... $12.99ea Amitostigma X enomotoe ......................................................... $12.00ea Z 5-6. Pale lilac petals and sepals, throat yellow with lilac markings. Ht. 10-5cm. Z5. Lovely little new orchid hybrid from Japan (A. Makes a nice clump in only a few years. keiskei x A. kinoshitae). The flower stalk arise from the tiniest tuber bearing showy pink flowers. These seem to multiple fast to form a clump. Bletilla Yokahama Kate .......................................................... $12.00ea Plant in semishade with good drainage . Ht. 50-100cm. Z5. A vigorous selection with light pink flowers with yellow markings on the lips and a darker pink trim. Amitostigma kinnoshitae ......................................................... $12.00ea Ht. 10-5cm. Z5. Lovely little new orchid from Northern Japan. The flower stalk arise from the tiniest tuber bearing showy white flowers. These seem to multiple fast to form a clump. Plant in semishade with Calanthe good drainage . This is a large group of hardy and semi-hardy ground orchids from Asia. Most can be grown in the garden but the frost tender species should be Bletilla brought indoors. They prefer a lightly shaded woodland setting with humus rich soil. Most spread quite rapidly, and are extremely showy and This is a wonderful group of easy to grow hardy ground Orchids. These rare in North America. Great companion plants for Ferns, Hostas, and are best planted 5cm deep in light shade to full sun in a well drained Bleeding Hearts. These like to be fed a lot with a weak solution of liquid humus-rich soil. In colder areas (Zone 5-6) they need to be planted 10- fertilizer while in active growth. 15cm deep and in yet colder areas they can easily be grown in pots indoors or in an alpine house. Calanthe aristulifera ................................................................. $33.00ea Bletilla striata .............................................................................. $6.00ea Ht. 30-45cm. Z7. From Kyushu Island in Japan comes this beauty with Ht.