About White Lupin Gardens

The first Spotted Lady Slipper I ever met was a breathtaking event, the highlight of a hike in Delta, Alaska.  Later when I bought a home in Fairbanks, I found 5 little orchid leaves in a grassy corner of the yard. I weeded, protected and built a flowerbed around the orchids.  That was over 20 years ago and my handful of orchids have spread and multiplied.  We have all moved to Nikiski, Alaska and I am now able to offer some of my orchids for sale every summer. 

I am a born and raised Alaska with a love of native plants and gardening since i was very young.  I have spent a lot of my life identifying wild plants and growing them in my garden.  As part of my Bachelor's in biology, I studied wetlands developed a real fascination with bog and aquatic plants. I have done a lot of wading and mosquito swatting because of it.  Now that I am nearing retirement, I am starting a small nursery business for my excess plants.  I am not a large nursery, no employees, just me and a lot of plants overflowing their beds.  Though I will respond to orders as quickly as possible, I still have a day job that takes me away, I work above the arctic circle half the year, so please be patient. I plan to slowly expand over the next few years and have a lot of interesting native plants I hope to add to my catalog.

I can only ship plants June 1- August 15 when the plants are actively growing.  They die back slowly after blooming and are usually dormant in September.  I send by 3-day priority mail.  I wrap each plant in live sphagnum moss and make sure its snugly packed. 

I own a natural kettle pond that covers a couple of acres next to my garden. The moss your plants are packed in usually contains small bonus plants, some are Bog Rosemary (Andromeda polifolia), Round Leaf Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), and Bog Cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos). If you trim off the top 3 - 4 inches of the sphagnum and snuggly arrange the heads upright in a pot they can grow and form a living mulch.  You need to spray them daily, at least, to keep the humidity up.  Sphagnum moss as a ground cover works really well for carnivorous plants especially.

Stay tuned. I have a collection of wild native herbs and a few alpine plants I hope to add for next year.