Started from seed purchased on eBay about ten years ago, I’m not sure these can be called “Loch Ness.” It is probably more likely to call the seedlings of Loch Ness. Like Chester, this is a thornless clone, and like Chester, I have had almost no luck getting decent berries from this plant. My brother has another of the seedlings growing at the P-Patch he manages in West Seattle, and that one gets berries every year when he can fend the weeders off who see any blackberry as a weed.

As I work to clear away the massive camellia and other plants in this area of the orchard garden, I’m hoping I’ll be able to free up some space for this plant to provide some tasty berries.

Despite the berry challenges, the flowers of this plant are some of the most beautiful in the garden.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to carve some space for it, feed it, and see if I can get it to produce some respectable berries next year.

The leaves are oddly curled on my seedling–not sure why, but you can see it in the photo above.

This rambling berry is from Raintree Nursery, purchased probably ten years ago. It hasn’t produced well for me, mostly because it lives on the northern-most berry trellis in the orchard bed and has been overgrown by a muscular camellia and shaded out by the berries in front of it. This year, however, because of the plant’s typical lengthy canes, I might have found a solution. I took a twelve-foot cane and laid it on top of the three berry trellises. The cane gets pretty much full sun up there and has set a lot of berries. I’m excited to see how they turn out.

For 2020, I am nurturing several other long canes to bend over the trellis tops again next year. Also, I’m going to cover a couple of bunches of berries with nylon bags to see if they ripen better and stay bug-free that way. I can’t wait to taste them!

The driveway bed features both the purple species and the pink Canon Went clone of this fun plant. The originals came in a pot that sister Cate shared and these generous spreaders have made themselves at home in the border and in pots ever since. Bees love these flowers, which is fun to watch.

Possibly because of the late spring, a few of these plants have really grown tall this year–approaching six feet! They usually top out at half that.

For 2020, I’ll work to get more and better photos of these plants.

This rambler was started from a seed borrowed from the Arboretum about 15 or so years ago. It has turned into a maleficent marauder. It has good qualities, but I need to root it out now that I see what it can do. It has clean blue-green foliage, wicked thorns, and lovely, fragrant single light pink wild-rose flowers. Best of all (and worst of all) it sets myriad bright red oval hips that are extremely festive in the fall and winter. The hips are bursting with viable seeds and they have spread around my yard–several along the driveway bed and a large one at the corner of the orchard bed near the neighbor’s yard. That one is over ten feet tall and smothering other plants and blooming madly right now! So, it has to go soon.

Here are some photos of the plants, flowers and hips through the years.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to conquer it completely and replace it with native plants with less territorial ambition.

This rose was a mystery until just last week. We have a rose rambling alongside and inside our “Alistair Stella Gray” rose that I knew I didn’t plant. It had to be the rootstock of another rose. Last week, I looked it up and found that most roses are grafted onto the strong growing Dr. Huey.

Dr. Huey may not be the best rose ever developed, but he has his merits. And this time of year, we see him all over Seattle! He is by far the most common rose around, having outlasted all of his fancier grafted tops.

This rose doesn’t have clean foliage, but the flowers have a classic charm and and a wonderfully intense red color that contrast well with the apricot-white of its more robust rambling neighbor.

In 2020, I’ll sneak in and put a fertilizer spike near this plant’s roots and prune it back a bit after flowering.

The first time I grew yarrow from seed was several decades ago when the “Summer Pastels” strain was released. I grew a bunch of them and planted them around the yard and they lasted a year or two and looked pretty good. Eventually, they died off. When I was choosing easy-from-seed perennials for the memory garden, I remembered yarrow and ordered more seeds.

Achillea millefolium is a native plant. This color strain likely isn’t purely native, but I’m hoping it gives some value to the native fauna. I also have started a few dozen plants of the straight species to plant around the garden–they are tiny seedlings right now, but will be ready to plant out by autumn.

For 2020, my plans are to spread yarrows far and wide and hope they attract lots of native pollinators.

Another fun plant from brother Tim, this plant came into my life a long time ago–at least a dozen years. It survives by seeding itself around into pots, sometimes welcomed and sometimes not. It has pretty leaves with maroon chevrons and round pink flowers that arrive over a long season. It is a trailing plant–I’m not sure exactly how long it might get since I cut if off before it really takes over.

The flowers appear to be a pollinator favorite. While working in the greenhouse today, I noticed a native orange-rumped bumble bee repeatedly visiting these plants on the greenhouse shelf.

For 2020, I’ll get some better photos of the plant itself and just enjoy the surprise nature of this plant’s appearance all around the greenhouse.

So many roses smell wonderful, but this climber tops them all in my estimation. I got a start of this plant at the Arboretum gift shop fifteen or so years ago and boy, did it ever grow! It has been blessing us with its floral show and fragrance every May/June and then a sporadic later show, as well.

The plant needs a hard chop in early spring to keep it in line. I neglected to do that this year. The flowers were amazing, but the canes are overtaking one of the dwarf cherries and heading over the roof!

I pruned the rose a bit today and will whack it back good next weekend to try to get it to resprout and rebloom later in the summer.

Purchased for the memory garden and planted out in 2018, these hardy geraniums, which I can’t tell apart, are a favorite. They both generously produce lavender-blue flowers with a white eye in May/June/July and probably will do so again in the fall if I cut them back at just the right time.

This year, I was worried that the plants weren’t going to do much. The cool, wet spring seemed to stall out their growth, but they are growing wonderfully now and blooming well.

My 2020 plans for these plants is to trim them down in late July to see if they will grow back and bloom again. I’ll feed them at that time, too. And work to get some better photos of them.

This tree was a seedling growing outside a fence in Broadview. Brother Tim and I discovered them on an adventure somewhere. It was only a few inches tall at that time, almost twenty years ago. I grew the plant in a pot for a few years and then decided it would be the perfect tree to plant near our koi pond in the woodland garden.

The tree grew quickly and gracefully and is beautiful next to the pond. I read somewhere, about ten years ago, that Styrax can be poisonous to fish! We’ve had no problems with the koi, but we cover the pond in the fall to keep leaves out and net all the flowers out that have dropped off the tree in June.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to keep it trimmed, if needed, and enjoy the dappled shade it provides to the koi pond.