When we first created the Douglas fir bed, I tried desperately to fill in the new garden space with “native” plants. Like many naive gardeners, I didn’t do the research to see what plants were native locally–I just assumed that any US wildflowers would be perfect in a new shady wildflower garden.

I was really wrong, and I know that now. Most of the imports came and went in one season. The best exception is that one Trillium grandiflorum still lives in that bed and several others have taken hold where I planted them in the woodland garden. These are similar to the Trilliums of my childhood–Trillium ovatum that grow wild here in wooded areas all around Washington.

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For 2020, I hope to work carefully around these plants as I install native flora in the surrounding areas. I ordered Trillium ovatum seeds from Amazon, but some dastardly Chinese seller sent me rice hulls with a Trillium ovatum label! So, I will keep looking for seeds to start my own native Trilliums. They are such a wonderful plant.

I noticed these plants blooming in the woodland garden this afternoon. These came from my friend Diane’s garden. She paid a landscape designer years ago to design the garden around her Seattle home. The designer was obviously not in tune with the plants she chose. One huge mistake was that she introduced an invasive, weedy cinquefoil as a groundcover. The other big mistake was that she planted Pachysandra terminalis in full sun on sandy soil as a ground cover. I helped root out the misplaced Japanese spurge and brought some home to our shady woodland garden.

The plants have done much better and have spread and bloom nicely every year now that they are in spot that matches their tastes.

These plants don’t need much in 2020, but I might dust the area with some organic fertilizer to give them a bit of a boost. They share their bed with a Japanese maple and a Nandina, so there is a tussle for nutrients.

Two more palm seeds that followed me home from Hawai’i germinated and are growing well on the heat mat in my exercise room at home. One appears to be a bamboo-type palm, and the other is tough to tell, as it only has one long leaf with another leaflet just starting.

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Here is a photo of when the seeds were just getting started.

I will likely separate these two seedlings in 2020, pot them into 6″ pots and wean them off of the heat mat. Hopefully, they will adapt to living in the windowsill or in my office at work.

Sister Cate and Brother Tim purchased this tree peony for me, I think from Cricket Hill, about 25 years ago. I haven’t done a great job of cultivating this shrub, but it has bloomed a few times and this year has two flower buds. Here is what the plant looks like today.

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My 2020 goals for this plant will be to get some photos of the flowers as they open and then to clear out the Camellia and other plants around it so that it has room to breathe and grow. I’ll fertilize it with organic, acid-lover fertilizer.

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Another made-up name for a seedling Clivia started from an eBay purchased seed about eight years ago. This clone has stubbier leaves, a dwarfish disposition, and flowers that are short and small, but in a brighter reddish-orange hue.

I know this plant bloomed once before but I don’t seem to have any photos of it except some taken this year. So, below is what I have and I’ll keep it updated as the flowers open.

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My 2020 goal for this plant will be to get some good pictures of the flowers and label the plant appropriately. Then, I’ll make a decision about whether it is a keeper or not. If not, I may give it away while it is in flower (the only time anyone will take a Clivia!). If it is a keeper, I will top-dress it well, fertilize it heavily and tend to it along with all the other Clivias in my burgeoning collection.

Okay, so maybe I just made up that name. But I think I have the right since I grew this plant from seed! It is one of the best seedlings I’ve seen so far of the dozens that I’ve grown. It was probably an eBay seed purchased and started about eight years ago.

The flowers are an excellent color and shape. The only drawback is that the scapes, so far, don’t have that many flowers.

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Below are photos of the plant from this year.

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My 2020 plans for this plant are to top-dress it and fertilize it well, move it out to a nice shady spot for the warm months and keep it watered and fed so that it will bloom even better next year.

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This shrub goes back a long way, but I’m not sure how long ago I added it or from where it was purchased or gifted. I remember planting it next to the Forsythia, knowing that they would bloom about the same time and given their yellow tones, that they might not clash together as they loudly heralded spring.

Here is the plant today in bloom. The clash that I’ve created is less to do with color and more to do with style. The Corylopsis has a more gentle presence, much more subtle. It is lovely in bloom and the leaves are impressively textured and turn some interesting colors in autumn.

I have no 2020 plans for this plant. It just does what it does and the more I leave it alone, the better it seems to like it.

We bought our house in 1995 and there weren’t many plants on the property at the time. We decided to add a pond next to the garage soon after moving in so there was much digging to be done. Somehow in the midst of all that mess and madness, I remember digging up a little stick that was barely alive and barely recognizable as a Forsythia start. It was about a foot tall at the time and had just one sad little branch. I jammed it quickly into a hole at the front of the garden and forgot about it.

Cut to 2020 and here is that little stick today.

This year, the show is particularly bright and cheerful. The shrub tops out at over seven feet tall.

I don’t know which clone this is–maybe Lynwood Gold. Yellow-gold is a tough color for me to deal with in the garden. I have some awful deeply inherent bias against yellow flowers. But I’m glad I’ve made an exception with this plant.

My 2020 plan for this plant will be to prune it back to about five feet tall after it is finished flowering. It doesn’t ask for much else.

I’m excited that there are some nice flowers showing up in the greenhouse.

First, the Masdevallias have spiked up nicely–I was worried that I would get no flowers at all but with today’s count I’ve confirmed at least twenty flowers!

The Pleione orchids are blooming well, too. I have fifteen total flowers that I can see so far. The bulk of blooms are Pleione formosana. There are a few of the hybrid, darker-colored clone–I think four flowers on that one this year.

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These blooms are all in addition to the Clivia spikes that number in the twenties and are set to start opening this weekend. Stay tuned for photos of those as they bloom.

I believe this tree was purchased in 2014 and it is already big and productive. As with most of my fruit trees and brambles, it came from Raintree Nurseries. The tree is glorious in bloom and very fruitful, but we haven’t found a way to squirrel-proof the tree, so we hardly get any of the ripe fruit. The squirrels grab all of them just a few days before they would be truly ripe.

Originally, I had planned to espalier this tree, but it got away from me before I had the chance! It is easily twelve feet tall now and has few lower branches, so I don’t think I could go back and fix the problem I created by letting it grow on its own.

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You can see from the photo above how much the tree has grown. It is in full bloom now, March 15, 2020. I’m not sure if enough pollinators are out and we had a pretty cold frost last night.

My plans for this tree in 2020 are to figure out a way to protect the fruit so I actually get to eat some of it! I tried tying on fruit protecting nylon bags last year and secured the bags to the branches, but the squirrels 1) bit into the bags and 2) pulled the fruit loose, but left it hanging in the bags. There isn’t really a way to keep the squirrels from reaching the tree, so the plan has to be to keep them away from the fruit with netting and scaffolding and possibly some explosive devices.