This plant is fairly new–it was a gift from brother Tim last year and I planted it in the memory garden. I think of gentians as delicate woodland plants, so I wasn’t sure how this one would do in the former hell strip. Surprisingly, it came up strong and actually bloomed pretty well with striking light blue four-petaled flowers.

My future plans for this gem are to keep it watered and fed and possibly get seeds off of it to germinate next spring.

My boss gave me this plant back in the spring. I’ve tried Martha Washington geraniums before, but I’m not sure I ever tried a Regal geranium. I have been extremely surprised by this plant–it has had three flushes of bloom sitting on my desk in fairly low light (about 18″ from a north-facing window). The only care I’ve given it is a few pieces of Jobe’s organic plant spikes and consistent watering.

The flowers are spectacular shades of magenta, mauve, maroon, and purple.

My future plans for this plant are to keep it in the office as long as we have an office (we’re exploring 100% work-from-home) and let it go cool and dry in the winter, then rev it back up with a repotting and some fertilizer in early spring.

I purchased three of these ground covery plants in 2018 to add to the memory garden. They have struggled to settle in the dry, barren former hell strip, but this year has seen some positive growth and some flowers. Known as wall germander, I am impressed by the shine, dark green leaves and the flowers a bright shade of pink that contrasts nicely with the foliage.

My future plans for these plants are to keep them fed and trimmed and hope they create a solid, drought-resistant ground cover in the next year or so.

When you ask me what my favorite season is, I might answer “berry season!” I pretty much love any and all berries, and raspberries are no exception. Most people would have a special area of their garden set aside for raspberries and tie them to wires and keep them tame and tidy. I’ve inadvertently taken a differnt path–I grow them in my borders and they have increased their footprint over time so that now there are probably 100 plants or more, in both gold- and red-berried cultivars.

I would guess I’ve had these red raspberries in the garden for twenty years. They never fail to produce two crops of delicious berries, mostly in the bed on the north side of the driveway. They lean way over the driveway and the car gets less and less room as the seaon progresses, but I don’t want to cut them back because, well, BERRIES!!!

My future plans for these plants are to remove old canes in late winter and trim the remaining canes down to about two feet tall. I’ll feed them some organic berry fertilizer and stake some of the taller ones that lean into the driveway so there might still be room for the car.

Much hated throughout most of the year, but much-loved in August when the delicious berries ripen. This is a Class C noxious weed in King County, which means it is not selected for control because there is no way to control it now, it’s already EVERYWHERE.

This was an important plant from my childhood. My siblings and I would harvest berries every summer, creating scaffolds to reach inside the huge bramble thickets in the field behind our back yard. We even had names for the particularly large, sweet berries we came across once in awhile–we called them Plumpa Plumpas.

I have tried to grow domesticated blackberries and almost gotten none of them. Either they never ripen, get bugs, or the birds get them before I do. I finally gave up and just cultivated one Himalayan blackberry plant in a raised bed on the south side of our property. Now I get hundreds of blackberries every year!

I have some guilt given the fact that this is a noxious weed that is causing disaster with native plants and ecosystems across the world. The County recommends control in wilderness areas and natural lands being restored with native plants. Since we don’t have any of those in close proximity, I’m going to enjoy my guilty berry pleasures for a few more years.

This plant has to be pruned and tied to keep it in bounds, so I’ll stay on top of that in the future. I’m working on harvesting enough berries to make a pie this year, which would be my first blackberry pie.

Yet another showy begonia to highlight from my collection. I grew these plants from seed starting early in 2018 and they have proven to be pretty hardy. I winter them over in the greenhouse in dry pots and they come back and bloom beautifully in the summer.

Begonias are perfect plants for our back patio. There is a mix of sun and shade there and it seems to be just the right combination of the two for this family of plants. I like the dark foliage and the flowers show up nicely with brilliant pink male and female flowers over several months.

My future plans for these plants are to keep moving them into larger pots, feed them well in the spring and enjoy them as a perfect patio plant.

The Douglas aster just joined my plant family this spring. My project during the COVID-19 lockdown was to add a native plant garden where some of my front lawn used to be. I was excited that the local native plant nursery had Douglas asters for sale in four-inch pots. I purchased three of them and set them out near the sidewalk. They have done really well there and are now blooming handsomely at close to three feet tall.

My future plans for these plants are to take divisions in early fall to increase my numbers of them and start planting them in the memory garden. I have other perennial asters there, but they are not the Seattle natives and pollinators seem ambivalent about them.

This plant features one of the silliest of common names, “Joe Pye Weed.” It is a bold herbaceous perennial–really bold! Mine are about seven feet tall this year and maybe four feet wide. I started some from seed for the south side of the driveway over twenty years ago. Those original plants died out eventually, but not before they seeded around a little, and some volunteers came up on the north side of the driveway. I have at least two plants there now.

Pollinators love the unusual lavender flowers. New leaves have a purple tinge, too, and their arrangement is attractive around the tall stems.

These plants don’t ask for much so I’ll just keep enjoying the flowers that I have to look up to and the pollinators that they attract.

I wanted some lilies for the memory garden that looked somewhat natural and these bulbs were on sale at Gilbert H. Wild, so I purchased five of them.

They bloomed the first time last year at about 4 feet tall and with just a few flowers. This year, however, they are much more robust and tall and floriferous!

I plan to keep these bulbs fed and watered and enjoy their spicy fragrance and graceful blooms. The anthers on these flowers are amazingly huge!

Native to the US, but not to Seattle, this mint relative known as lemon mint has a subtle beauty and a snappy fragrance to its leaves. I grew these plants from seed years ago and I have a fond memory of being surprised late in the season when they finally bloomed–they weren’t spectacular, but the flowers and bracts are pretty and they last a long time.

This year’s plants were started from seeds early and eventually put out on the patio and the head of the driveway. The patio plants have been happier with partial shade. The plants in the sunny driveway got to bloom, but then one missed watering and poof! They were fried.

Now that these are blooming, it seems like growing a few more next year to add to the memory garden might be a great idea, as I think pollinators will love them–though they don’t find them back on the patio. This plant is edible, too, so I may add it to a salad or make some tea with it.