Special note: I have discontinued mail order sales as of October 2021, and have retired the business. (Find a list of other nurseries that sell and ship epimediums here.)
Although I am no longer running the nursery, this website will continue to be a source of information about Epimediums. The plants listed in the catalogue include descriptions of those that I have offered for sale since 2014 when this website originated, many of which were purchased and are being propagated and sold by some of the mail order nursery sources that I have listed.
It has been my pleasure and honor to promote this great garden plant and to get to know many of my customers personally. Thank you all for your support and kindness to me over the last 25+ years. Retirement has been a bittersweet decision, but new adventures are calling. — Karen Perkins
Garden Vision Epimediums was a small, rural, Massachusetts-based, retail nursery, established in 1997 by Darrell Probst. It featured the best selection of Bishops caps, Barrenworts and Fairy Wings for sale in the United States.
Epimediums can make the perfect addition to your woodland shade garden. Their delicate, fragile beauty belies their tough, long-lasting nature. They are easy to grow, early spring-blooming and deer-resistant shade plants. Their flowers also come in a wide range of shapes and colors. Many also have amazing spring (and sometimes fall) foliage colors. Foliage size and shape varies from heart-shaped to spiny and arrow-shaped. Some leaflets can grow to be as large as your hand, others as small as your thumbnail. A number of varieties sport evergreen foliage for long-term landscape value.
Many gardeners know these plants simply as workhorse ground covers for dry shade, but recent hybrids and new species discoveries have added many new dimensions to this intriguing genus. Most of the epimediums in the collection represent the collecting and hybridizing efforts of epimedium expert, Darrell Probst. I worked with Darrell during the initial development of the nursery, and it was my full time job from 2001-2023.
Check out the About Epimediums and Epimediums Up Close (which is a series of past articles on different topics over the years) sections which you can access by scrolling down the Home page. They both give lots of specific information about Epimediums that we have learned over the years, much of which you won’t find in books.
Browse through the main catalogue, or click the pull down tab FIND PLANTS. Here you can sort by several characteristics including flower color, species, hardiness, drought tolerance, size, etc. Email or phone with any questions that you have.
Several garden writers and bloggers have spoken to me over the years and you can find their articles or interviews at by clicking the Articles/Plant Blogs link.
Enjoy your adventures in the shade garden, a past-time that will keep us all safe and sane during these trying times. A big thank you to all who have supported small nursery businesses like mine, that depend on strong sales during the spring and fall planting seasons for their year-round livelihood.
Karen Perkins
