The memory garden features two strains of Lupinus polyphyllus, the Russell strain started from seed in 2018 and one called Tutti Frutti started in 2019 that is blooming this year for the first time. We are lucky to be in the Pacific Northwest where lupins really shine. The plants are beautiful from the time they leaf out (who can ignore the beauty of raindrops on lupin leaves?) in spring through their flowering period. It is after the flowers fade that lupins become a challenge because their subsequent deterioration is very public and horrifically dramatic. They get powdery mildew and the leaves wither away but hang on just enough to make every lupin grower feel guilty and incompetent. I do my best to clip them down as soon as I think it is safe to do so and not harm the plants. Another approach is to trim them a bit and grow plants nearby that can overgrow the failing lupins. The seed pods are attractive and it would be great to enjoy them longer, but they get mired in the mess that is the rest of the plant and I usually give them the chop.

It seems unfair to think about their summer weakness when their spring glory is…glorious.

Another aspect of these flowers is the scent. The purple one above has a spicy fragrance. Others are more sweet, or honey-like.

My 2020 plans for these plants are to feed and water them as needed to keep them growing well. I am growing some native Lupinus bicolor that I will plant around the native plant garden and potentially the memory garden, as well, to help supplement the hybrids. Bees absolutely love these flowers. See the video below:

This gorgeous purple rose, bred by David Austin, blooms reliably every spring despite being shaded and crowded. It only gives me a few flowers, but they are unusual and exquisite!

My 2020 plans for this plant are to try to keep the bindweed off of it and to try to clear away some of the plants that are shading it. I’ll also feed and prune it to keep it healthy and hope for more spicy purple blooms in the coming years.

Chaenorhinum is a species I’ve been drawn to for many years, but I didn’t try to grow them until 2018 when I ordered these seeds for the memory garden. I ended up with six or seven seedlings that I planted out on the street side of the garden. The seedlings were precocious and bloomed quickly with just a few flowers, but in 2019 they really put on a show. The plants and flowers are charming–diminutive, but showy when they get going. In 2020, only three plants appear to remain. They are blooming, but not with the gusto they showed last year.

I’ll keep working to get better photos–they are so tiny, my phone doesn’t want to focus on them!

For 2020, I’ll try to keep the weeds away and baby these babies a bit to maybe help them grow stronger.

Known as Santa Barbara daisies, these are amazing flowering machines. They start easily from seed, as well, which makes them a perfect filler or mass planting in a perennial border. I started a packet of seeds in 2018 for the memory garden. They bloomed a bit late that year but put on a good show, and they continue to get showier and showier over time. I think they like the dry, sunny spot in the former hell strip that is the memory garden.

My 2020 plans for these plants are to keep them fed a bit and weeded and just enjoy their exuberance.

The remaining Lathyrus niger in the garden is the progeny of my original plant that was purchased more than two decades ago and planted near the front porch. I’m a big fan of this plant family, with sweet peas as the most famous member, but lots of interesting species. And unlike some of them, L. niger doesn’t seem particularly invasive here. It seeds around a bit, but I’ve only ever found a few around the garden. The plant grows as an herbaceous perennial getting close to three feet tall. It blooms in May with mauvy pink pea flowers in clusters. More interest arrives in the late summer/fall when black pea pods form all over the plant.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to enjoy the flowers and the seed pods and relocate any seedlings I find to better places in the garden. This plant takes no special care at all and doesn’t even get watered in dry spells.

I purchased seeds for Geranium pratense “Purple Haze.” I think the packet was 5 seeds and I ended up with three plants, two purplish ones and one green one. This was in 2018. I planted them together in the memory garden. The plain green plant is thriving. The purple ones lag seriously behind but their foliage is really quite striking. I may just have to move the green one so it doesn’t crowd them out and embarrass Purple Haze’s weak growth.

For 2020, I will rearrange these plants to give them more room to spread out, feed them well, and harvest some seeds if there are any. So far, this variety has not proven to be weedy or seedy at all, so that is another excellent trait.

With the bigroot geranium as one of its parents, this naturally occuring hybrid has similar habits as its G. macrorrhizum parent, but is much less sturdy. I received on of these plants many years ago and it has survived among the G. macrorrhizum around it, but has not spread much. The flowers are a nice white color and the leaves color up nicely in the fall. This is one of the few hardy geraniums in my yard that isn’t trying to take over.

My 2020 plans for this plant will be to carve some space around it and feed it to try to give it a fighting chance in the Douglas fir bed.

Another maleficent marauder, this plant came to me through a gardening friend. Hardy geraniums really seem to like our property, because it wasn’t long before this plant was seeding all around the original plant. It grows easily and quickly. It event took hold in the heavily rooted, dry, shady area under the Douglas fir tree. I liked it a lot at first, but too much of a good thing has led me to eradicate it several times. Or maybe I should say “attempt to eradicate it.”

My 2020 plans for this plant are to root it out wherever I find it again and see if I can put a dent in its stranglehold around the Douglas fir and beyond.

Another Annie’s Annuals perennial purchased in 2018 for the memory garden, this is a pretty cool plant. Well, it is pretty, and has cool elements, also. The foliage is a striking gray and intricately cut, making a rosette of wonderful, graphic patterns. Then, the flowers come–dozes of bright orange poppies. And finally, the “horned poppy” starts growing its horns. The seedpods develop at a rapid clip–long, long daggers shooting out from every stem.

In the photo above, you can see the remarkable seed pods. The best thing about the seed pods is that they were full of viable seeds! I planted a bunch of them and they sprouted. I potted them on and they continue to thrive. I’m hoping to have a few more for the garden and a few to share.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to keep it fed and weeded and to grow its offspring up to adulthood so they can go out in the garden this autumn.

I ordered these sun roses from a mail order nursery in 2018 as part of the memory garden. They struggled the first in that former hell strip and I was afraid it was just too dry and full of roots to accommodate them. However, they are pleasantly surprising me this year with a flush of bright flowers in a burnt orangey-red color that contrasts perfectly with the purple geraniums nearby.

These tough little guys don’t need much to survive. I don’t think they really like the chip mulch that is thick on the memory garden, but they have overcome the mulch and found their way to health and beauty. For 2020, I’ll just make sure they get fed as needed and keep the weeds away from them so they can really spread out and provide an even more amazing show next year.