An Iowa Garden

Sometimes things work out just right... a few years ago we went to California to visit my wife's sister & her hubby (see previous references to their garden to kill for on top of a cliff looking over Tomales Bay, north of San Francisco). While there we were able to accompany the Inverness Garden Club on an exclusive tour of The Quarry Hill Botanical Gardens, which is a sanctuary for endangered plants, mainly from Japan, China, and Korea. It's a gorgeous place, filled with rare plant gems, nestled on the side of a mountain in an old quarry near Glen Ellen. As we walked in, the director told our group that he was really excited, because they had just obtained a specimen of a rare shrub from China that was new to them, Sinocalycanthus chinensis, and he was not even going to show it to us, out of concern, I guess, that someone might purloin it. In what might be my single hardest act of self control in my life, I didn't tell him that I had one five feet tall growing in the midlle of Iowa (he probably wouldn't have believed me anyway). It WAS quite scarce then, having just entered commerce, and I got mine, by fluke, having picked it out of a long, obscure plant list. It's about the size of a lilac now, with very nice, unusual, shiny green, twin leaves, and flowers that look like they are made of sugar to go on top of a cake. I have a bright pink, climbing rose intertwined with it, for a nice combination. There is available now, a hybrid between this shrub, and it's cousin, the American Calycanthus floridus, the sweetshrub; the hybrid carries the moniker Sinocalycalycanthus. I might have to pick that up next spring just for the name.