New Plants!!!!

I headed to Swanson's Nursery in Seattle today to spend the holiday dollars I've been saving since this past summer.  This is always a bad idea because I always end up buying way more than the holiday dollars are good for.  I know, it's all part of their brilliant scheme to get me to drive from Normandy Park to their nursery in North Seattle several times a year.  It's working really well for them.

I was hoping Swanson's would have red bananas (Ensete ventricosum 'Maurelii') because I saw a series of You Tube videos from a guy in Canada who turned one red banana into a hundred in a couple months and wanted to try it.  Here are links to the three videos:

Part 1 - October 28th - Preparing the red banana for propagation
Part 2 - December 30th - Rooting & offset formation
Part 3 - March 31st - Separating the new offsets

Sadly, they didn't have any red bananas but they did have some other great plants that could not resist going home with me:

Clockwise from back left:

Nolina microcarpa (Bear grass) - A yucca relative that forms a huge grass-like crown
Sciadopitys verticillata 'Sternschnuppe' - An umbrella pine with super duper thick needles
Yucca desmetiana 'Blue Boy' (aka Yucca aloifolia 'Purpurea') - Tall grower with fleshy, purple leaves
Phormium 'Taya' (New Zealand flax) - This has very rich purple leaves (see below)
Pachysandra axillaris 'Windcliff fragrant' - Don't get this confused with Pachysandra axillaris 'Windcliff'.  That one gets huge leaves but no fragrance; this one produces fragrant sarcococca-like flowers in early spring.

Here is Phormium 'Taya' compared with the standard, Home Depot bronze phormium.