What does a garden writer do when he’s confined to bed with the mother of all sinus colds - apart from doze through re-runs of Bonanza and Gunsmoke? He reads. And what does he read? Mysteries and plant catalogs. I picked up a mystery last night – I won’t embarrass the author by naming it; let’s just say that when I came to the line “But Cressi was wrong about in whom the blonde was interested” that was enough…. “wrong about in whom”?! Can you compost paperbacks? His editor needs a little extra training, I think. Or a smack on the head,

So I tossed that aside and picked up the latest catalog from Wayside Gardens and amongst all the flash and colorful newcomers my bleary eye fell on two things: laburnums and orchids.

This year Wayside have added Laburnum anagroides ‘Fastigiata’, an upright form of the very familiar tree known in the US as the Goldenchain Tree and in the UK as the Golden Rain Tree (don’t ask, please). Now an upright laburnum reaching 20ft x 8ft would be great in small gardens or as a street tree and ‘Fastigiata’ is very rarely seen on either side of the pond. Slightly puzzling, though, that in a catalog dazzling with color their picture shows a tree with not a single flower.

Their website features a second, slower growing upright laburnum, Laburnum x watereri ‘Sunspire’, reaching 18ft x 8ft, shown in sparkling color. Not only is this cheaper, $39.95 for a plant in a mysterious “Trade Gallon” pot – a gallon which only contains three quarts! – but this hybrid produces very very few of the poisonous seeds produced by forms of L. anagroides. And ‘Fastigiata’ is listed at $69.95 for a bareroot tree. I know which I’d like to try.

And then there are the lady’s slipper orchids, they list two native US native Cypripedium species and they look absolutely gorgeous. But what, exactly, do you get for your $99.95 – apart from one bareroot plant? Well, C. reginae is one of the easiest lady’s slippers to grow and likes rich, damp soil with a little shade from the midday sun. The plants supplied are nursery-grown, from seed, and certified by CITES, the convention that oversees trade in rare species. Excellent.

They also list C. pubescens, correctly C. parviflorum var. pubescens, which is also relatively easy but needs more shade, takes a drier soil and likes good drainage. “None of those suspect field-collected Orchids here” the website says about C. reginae. Not so about C. pubescens. There’s nothing in the catalog or on the website to say that the plants are nursery grown or certified by CITES – so perhaps these are dug from the wild. If you want to spend a hundred bucks on a lady’s slipper orchid, and they do make spectacular garden plants, you know which one to choose.  British gardeners thinking about trying lady’s slippers should start at the Rare Plants lady’s slipper page.