My brother brought me this plant for the memory garden in 2018. We were unclear about its identity, but I’ve since done some research and found out it is alfalfa! How sadly citified must I be that I didn’t recognize such a well-known crop plant? The plant is surprisingly ornamental. It gets big and bushy–three feet tall and wide and starts blooming in June with soft lavender-blue clover-like flower heads. It is planted in a tough spot under in poor soil under a Douglas fir tree and shrugs off that adversity.

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In 2020, I’m just enjoying the simplicity of this plant and trying to see if pollinators like it as much as they seem to like other leguminous garden plants, like the lupines and clovers nearby.

This is a somewhat common houseplant and also a poplular groundcover in warmer areas of the world. My plants aren’t as purple as I’ve seen in photos due to a lack of bright sun, but they do grow vigorously, providing trailing stems and some lovely pink flowers now and again. Leon brought my original cutting back from his cousin Brenda’s house about six years ago. It was never on my wish list, but now I have about eight of them, as they are so easy to propagate and it feels so wasteful to throw trimmings away!

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In 2020, I’m using these as foliage plants around the patio–I cut them back hard in early spring and potted them into better, fertile soil in larger pots. They are leafing out abundantly now and adding some lush purply-green to our back yard oasis.

Started from seed in 2017 for the memory garden, I don’t recall for sure from where the seeds came or the identity of the cultivar. Four of the plants remain in that garden and have cheery tubular flowers with contrasting throats and feature jellybean colors of purple and pink. They get about 15″ tall and are nicely uniform, starting to bloom here in late June, which times out perfectly after the columbines and lupines.

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My 2020 plans for these plants are to cut them back after flowering, keep the weeds at bay, feed them, and hope they don’t die out like so many of the short-lived penstemon hybrids.

The garden is overwhelming right now in its beauty and bursting at the seams with life.

I harvested Goumi berries today, which is rewarding, if a bit tedious. I usually just use these for smoothies. They have a tart-sweet flavor and a big pit in the middle of each berry, and each comes with a stem that needs to be removed. The berries ripen at different rates so I had to pick just the ripe ones. Here they are, all cleaned up and ready to freeze.

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On the patio, a hawthorn tree that we’ve had in a pot for close to twenty years is blooming–as best we can remember, for the first time.

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I took cuttings today of native and non-native plants, red flowered currants, thimbleberries, salmonberries, red osier dogwwood, dwarf lilac, goumi berry, and aronia. I’m hoping I hit the timing right on these–it would be great if a bunch of them rooted.

With my macro lens, I captured a few fun photos in the greenhouse.

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Some Hippeastrums are still blooming in the greenhouse:

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The wonderful Voodoo lily fooled me yet again yesterday! I was walking along the sidewalk looking at the garden in the opposite direction and immediatly caught the whiff of decaying flesh. I though, “Oh, God–what died?” and started looking, but when I turned around, there were the amazing floral spathes of Dracunculus, bloody maroon and stinking!

My original bulb came from Jeff Tangen and they have spread out over time and I’ve moved offsets around the garden, but the best ones continue to be in the Douglas fir bed. Somehow, they manage to thrive in that dry shade and “reward” me with corpse flowers every year.

This plant has interest for at least half the year. The leaves are unusual, the flowers magnificent, if short-lived, and the berries that follow add to the show for several more months.

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These plants need no care, so I don’t have many plans for them in 2020 other than to remind myself of their existence so I’m not looking for corspes when these flowers are the stink makers.

Grown from purchased seed about fifteen years ago, this tree took a while to develop but now is vigorous with impressive compound leaves. Like the nearby Idesia trees, I cut this back hard early each spring so that it stays shrub-sized with large, tropical-looking leaves. This is a treatment introduced to me from Christopher Lloyd in several of his books. He used this treatment with Catalpa trees and Paulownia trees, especially in his tropical beds. For me, it has been a way to incorporate precious tree seedlings into a yard that doesn’t have room for any more full-sized trees. Even with a deep pruning, the plant tops out at about twelve feet each year.

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My 2020 plans, as noted with Idesia, are to keep on top of this tree’s vigorous growth while changing the area around it. I plan to redo the garden bed with natives and head back some of the marauding raspberries.

I have two of these trees along the driveway that came from seeds borrowed from the Arboretum. The tree the seeds came from passed away not long after, so I’m glad I got these when I did.

My trees do not flower or seed, since I prune them hard back early each spring. I grow them for their amazing foliage. It has a tropical feel to it, with deep coloring, contrasting veining, and red petioles. And the size is just big enough to impress.

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My 2020 plans for this plant and for the bed they live in will be to keep them cut back aso they can serve as a backdrop for a cleaned-up (too many raspberries and weeds) and replanted driveway bed with some native perennials.

Purchased at a Puget Sound Gesneriad Society plant sale held at Sky nursery probably ten years ago, this plant is a late starter that really impresses when it reaches its peak. The leaves are richly quilted and deeply colored, while the flowers are graceful, pastel goblets with lovely details in the throats.

With my lazy label habits, I lost the tag for this plant almost the same day I bought it. I always thought it was a Chirita, but I found S. eumorpha online and that seems an exact match.

The plant grows from tubers and I haven’t done well by it, but it has managed to grow well every year until 2020. This year, no leaves were showing as of a month ago. When repotting all the other plants, I turned this treasure out of its pot and found most of the tuber had rotted over winter, but there was one solid bit. I potted that up and moved it to a top-shelf spot in the greenhouse and finally, just today, I noticed it leafing out.

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What a beautiful plant, right?

My 2020 plans for this plant are to nurture the surviving division to get it to bloom and also take a leaf cutting or two to see if I can expand my collection a bit with some insurance plants.

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Another Raintree Nursery purchase made close to a decade ago, this is another favorite berry that ripens in June/July, this is a variety of Rubus idaeus.

This berry’s canes are stiffer than the blackberry and tayberry canes and have a bluish white bloom that makes them easy to spot. The fruit appear in groups of about 7 or 9. A middle berry will ripen first, then the others will catch up over time. I like them so much straight from the cane that I’ve never made any baked goods or preserves with them.

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My Jewel plant has weakened a bit over time, though it looks like it will have quite a few berries this year. My 2020 plans are to slip some fertilizer around it and manage the new canes carefully by pruning to maximize their 2021 output.

Unlike the cultivated blackberry clones planted at the same time, this wonderful berry from Raintree Nursery has been a great provider of delicious June/July berries. It is a cross between  a blackberry and raspberry (Rubus fruticosus x R. idaeus) and it is early and prolific for me most years. The canes are long and wiry with myriad small thorns along their length.

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Tayberries have a mild flavor all their own, not particularly raspberry like or blackberry like.

My 2020 plan for these plants is to pot up some of the extra canes for plant sales or give-aways. Also, I will push some tip cuttings in late summer into pots to get them started easily for next year.