Every gardener has \u201choly grails\u201d\u2014plants that they have waited years to acquire. \u00a0Sometimes they are new introductions or discoveries that are prohibitively expensive; other times they are species or varieties that have gained popularity in Europe or the Far East and haven\u2019t made their way to U.S. shores.<\/p>\n
I have some evergreen \u201choly grails\u201d that I have lusted after for years and others that have spent less time on the \u201cmost wanted\u201d list.\u00a0 Yellow, double-flowered hyacinths are in the former category.\u00a0 I first heard about them several years ago when I interviewed Alan Shipp, holder of the British National Collection of hyacinths. \u00a0Shipp had been in touch with a Lithuanian botanist, who had discovered many old hyacinth varieties at a botanical garden in that country. \u00a0At the time, Shipp was hoping to acquire some of the yellow doubles. \u00a0He must have gotten them, increased his stock and ultimately sent bulbs on to Scott Kunst of Old House Gardens in Ann Arbor, Michigan.<\/p>\n
Now, at long last, Kunst is offering a limited number on his website, http:\/\/www.oldhousegardens.com<\/a>. \u00a0They are a little expensive, as hyacinths go, but the price was right for me. \u00a0As Scott Kunst noted, they are not available commercially anywhere else in the world.<\/p>\n Ship and Kunst thinks that these yellow double hyacinths may be an old variety called \u2018Ophir,\u2019 a reference to the supposed location of the legendary King Solomon\u2019s Mines. \u00a0Whether they are \u2018Ophir\u2019 or another heirloom cultivar, they are beautiful, with soft, fluffy yellow florets. \u00a0Like all hyacinths they are fragrant.<\/p>\n I ordered mine in the middle of the night–as soon as I opened up Old House Garden\u2019s e-mail.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to risk losing my long-sought yellow doubles to some other zealous hyacinth lover.\u00a0 \u00a0Now I can\u2019t wait for their arrival in October. \u00a0There is nothing like retrieving a \u201choly grail.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every gardener has \u201choly grails\u201d\u2014plants that they have waited years to acquire. \u00a0Sometimes they are new introductions or discoveries that are prohibitively expensive; other times they are species or varieties that have gained popularity in Europe or the Far East and haven\u2019t made their way to U.S. shores. I have some evergreen \u201choly grails\u201d that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2],"tags":[290,293,295,294,186,277,291,289,292],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","tag-alan-shipp","tag-british-national-hyacinth-collection","tag-bulbs","tag-growing-hyacinths","tag-heirloom-plants","tag-hyacinths","tag-old-house-gardens","tag-ophir","tag-scott-kunst"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":540,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions\/540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}