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 9 th through August September through January open Tuesday through Saturday 9am-4:30pm Welcome to our 2016 catalogue. We have made many new and exciting additions to our plant offerings this year, arisaemas, disporums, polygonatums, primulas, dwarf hostas and hepaticas to name a few. We will have an ever increasing selection of hepaticas available at the nursery, both European and Japanese forms. We’ll have a good selection of hepaticas that can be chosen in bloom at the nursery this year. We are also developing hundreds of new cultivars that you will soon be able to order or pick in bloom for future availability. At this point it looks like spring is going to come early. We have hellebores, the first hepaticas, cyclamen, scoliopus, witch hazels and sarcococca all starting to bloom the first week in January as well as adonis, edgeworthia and many others starting to push their flower buds. This year we will have four events: Helleborganza, our Yukiwariso (hepatica) festival, Growing Native and Orchidmania. Watch the website (events page) or go to our facebook page for details, including the best bloom timing especially for the Yukiwariso festival. The website lists only a small portion of what is available at the Nursery. Our first major event in 2016 will be ‘Helleborganza’(Hellebores), February 12th-March 31st . Helleborganza is our celebration of hellebores and other early blooming perennials including species snowdrops, winter aconites, adonis, double hepaticas and bulbocodium 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 15th (?) – 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 mid-march we will post an update on the events pages as to the best time to visit. I encourage those interested to look at our events page and our Japanese hepatica page. Our third event will be ‘Growing Native’ (Native Plants), May 1 st-7th and we will offer 20% off native plants during this week. This event is designed to feature and promote the use of native plants. We grow a vast array of Pacific Northwest and North American native plants. This year we’ll be hosting the event in our growing area and hopefully we’ve timed it to catch the peak of the blooming season for many of our favourite wildflowers. Check the events page on our website. Our fourth event held in conjunction with ‘Growing Native’ is ‘Orchidmania’. The number of hardy ground orchids has exploded and we would like gardeners to become more familiar with these beauties. The hybrids are very easy to grow and make a valuable and unique addition to the garden. We also have many species for the purist, some of which are easy to grow and some are not. All ground orchids will be 10% off during this week. We will also be holding classes during Orchidmania on how to grow and care for your hardy orchids. The Fee will be $50.00 for the class and at the end of the class you will receive a $50.00 voucher for use on the purchase of Hardy Orchids. Find out all you need to know on how to grow these hardy garden orchids and ask as many question as you like. 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. We would like to thank our customers, staff and suppliers for a great year and we’re looking forward to a fantastic 2016, 1 Thank you, Richard and Nancy Fraser 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 ferry from Ferns ......................................................................................... 10 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..………………………...38 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 Spring Sale................................................................................ 79 What to do when my order arrives ............................................ 83 1-888-223-3779 Native Plant Weekend and Orchidmania and workshops.......... 83 Or go to www.bcferries.com Table I. Hardiness Zones used in this catalogue. Temperatures are average winter lows. FahrenheitZoneCelsius ___________________________________ 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-Ferns Hardy Orchids Bletilla `Penway Dragon’ (formosana x szetschuanica)$15.99ea Z5-6. Flowers are variable in this cross but typically have purple-pink This includes a diverse group of ground orchids from around the petals and sepals, white lip with purple pink margin and spot. This has world. Some of these groups are relatively easy to grow like the turned out to be one of the more stunning and vigorous selections. Bletilla and Pleiones and some are more challenging like the Plant in full sun to part shade. Cypripediums. The cultural requirements for most of these orchids are similar. They require well drained but moist soil when in active Bletilla `Penway Paris’ (striata x szetschuanica) ................$15.99ea growth and excellent (almost dry) drainage in the winter when Z5-6. Rose purple petals, sepals and lip with white keels on lip. dormant. Light shade or partial sun works well. Bletilla are more tolerant of varying soil conditions and require more sun than other Bletilla `Penway Princess’ (formosana x yunnanensis)$15.99ea species. Z5-6. Light rose pink sepals and petals, darker on the reverse. Lip spotted red and yellow with purple red margin. Amitostigma X enomotoe ....................................................$12.00ea Ht. 10-5cm. Z5. Lovely little new orchid hybrid from Japan (A. keiskei x A. kinoshitae). The flower stalk arise from the tiniest tuber Bletilla `Yokohama’ (striata x formosana)..........................$12.99ea bearing showy pink flowers. These seem to multiple fast to form a Z 5-6. Pale lilac petals and sepals, throat yellow with lilac markings. clump. Plant in semishade with good drainage . Makes a nice clump in only a few years. Amitostigma kinnoshitae ....................................................$12.00ea Bletilla Yokahama Kate .................................................... $12.00ea Ht. 10-5cm. Z5. Lovely little new orchid from Northern Japan. The Ht. 50-100cm. Z5. A vigorous selection with light pink flowers with flower stalk arise from the tiniest tuber bearing showy white flowers. yellow markings on the lips and a darker pink trim. These seem to multiple fast to form a clump. Plant in semishade with good drainage . Bletilla Calanthe This is a large group of hardy and semi-hardy ground orchids from This is a wonderful group of easy to grow hardy ground Orchids.