Red flowering currant shrubs have been on my wish list for a while, but it wasn’t until I started landscaping with native plants that I actually added some to the garden. I purchased two of them from Seattle Native Plants this spring and Mark, the owner, sent me two pots with two strong currant starts in each, so technically I had four of them. Since then, I took cuttings from them and added five more small ones in pots in the greenhouse.

The value these plants bring is not just ornamental but in their wildlife value. From realgardensgrownatives.com:

Wildlife value
Pendulous flower clusters, which consist of numerous lightly fragrant, pink to reddish tubular flowers, bloom in profusion along this shrub’s many stems. They offer nectar and pollen at a time when early-emerging pollinators — such as queen bumble bees who must secure a nest and provide for offspring all by themselves — have little else to eat. The early blossoms are also attractive to birds, especially hummingbirds, but also bushtits, making this species a hub of wildlife activity for well over a month. Later on, when berries ripen as summer wanes, birds such as American robins and cedar waxwings feast (we can also eat them but they are rather tasteless). The small, lobed leaves may provide food for zephyr (Polygonia gracilis zephyrus), Ceanothus silkmoth (Hyalophora euryalus), and other butterfly and moth larvae, which in turn supply food for insectivorous birds. 

My 2020 plans for these plants are to keep them watered a bit as they continue to become established and sneak more cuttings off of them as I can for sales and gifts. I’m not sure I’ll get flowers next spring, but I imagine I will in 2022 and for many years to come.

Colette has been with me for many years, first along the fence to the west of the orchard garden, and now in the garden in front of the greenhouse. This rose is supposed to be a big shrub or climber, but mine has stayed a bit anemic, topping out at maybe four feet and only throwing out a few flowers in June or July. The foliage doesn’t stay clean, but the flowers are a wonderful old-fashioned blend of form and fragrance.

My future plans for this plant are to feed it well and try to get some stronger branches on it and ultimately many more blooms.

This may be the oldest rose in my garden. If I recall correctly, I moved it from our rental house in 1995 when we moved to this house. It has very little disease resistance and gets black spot terribly every year and loses most of its leaves. Somehow, though, it throws off a few brilliant red flowers every year. They are such a sumptuous color and fine shape that I’ve kept the rose around despite its shortcomings.

Europeana is planted under the giant climbers Alister Stella Gray and Dr. Huey next to the Jeff Tangen arbor. It isn’t an ideal position except that I get an excellent view of the flowers when I walk through the arbor.

My future plans are to feed the plant more attentively and keep the bigger roses at bay so it has room to grow.

Leon purchased this hybrid tea rose as a patio plant about four years ago. It was a gorgeous thing when it got to our house–lush deep green foliage and eventually got amazing, flaming-red flowers. That beauty didn’t last long, sadly, as we couldn’t keep the pot moist enough and the leaves dropped and the flowers disappeared. In the following spring, I planted the rose into the garden in front of the greenhouse, not sure if it would survive. But later that first year, it had a few flowers, and since then it has grown bigger and better every year.

This year, this rose became a conversation point with the neighbors on whose property line it resides. It had a HUGE cluster of laser-bright flowers that likely was visible from the space station. The neighbors struggle to appreciate the messy chaos of my gardens, but this rose–they could appreciate this rose!

The shrub had another flush of blooms in August, not as showy as the first giant flush.

My future plans for this plant are to keep it trimmed, fed, and watered to hopefully get even more big heads of flowers next year.

I’ve had this rose for quite a few years–at least twenty. I had the unimproved Bonica before this and it had lovely flowers but no disease resistance. The improved version blooms nicely and has better disease resistance but lacks any fragrance at all. How do you breed and sell a non-fragrant rose? And who would be dumb enough to buy one? Oh. Well, it IS pretty and in my defense, I think the tag said “light fragrance.”

This rose was moldering away on the fence in front of the woodland garden for years, but I moved it to the bed in front of the greenhouse, a much sunnier spot, about seven years ago. Since then, its depression has faded and some spectacular happy blooming has replaced it.

My future plans for this plant are to keep it pruned and well-fed so it will stay happily blooming every June.

I’m not positive of the identification of these bonsai starts I germinated about seven years ago. They seem less wishbone-branched than that species, but it is one of the typical types used for bonsai and I believe the seeds came to me under that name.

I have about five seedlings left of these shrubs. I don’t have them in bonsai pots yet, but they already have a tiny tree look to them, with their thick-ish trunks and cascading braches. The leaves color up beautifully in autumn and one of them had a flower for the first time this year, so there will be berries at some point.

My future plans for these plants are to get them into bonsai pots next year and work hard to train them into perfect little trees with tiny rose flowers and red-orange berries.

I don’t remember where my purple shamrock came from, but I know I’ve had it for a long time–maybe fifteen years or more. The foliage is amazing and the flowers are charming, plus it is a bulbous plant which makes it pretty forgiving of bad treatment. It will go dormant when unhappy and then spring up again better than ever when conditions improve. It also increases generously.

My future plans for this plant are to break off a few small divisions to have some extras to share next spring. I should put this plant in a better pot, as well, since it is in black plastic now.

I like the common names of this tree–Princess Tree or Empress Tree. My siblings and I often visited one at the arboretum near the parking lot from which we started our day-long treks. The seeds that resulted in my Paulownia tree came from pods off that tree. These trees are impressively vigorous and my favorite garden writer, Christopher Lloyd, would plant them in his flower borders and cut them back to the ground each year. This results in just a few vigorous stems shooting up from the ground with giant Empress Tree leaves.

Originally, when my seedlings started about five years ago, I intended to follow Mr. Lloyd’s lead, but since then I’ve decided to try to keep my remaining tree as a patio pot plant. I’m not sure this will work, as the tree has suffered a lot this year, the one year I actually gave it some attention.

My future plans for this plant are to move it up to a larger pot and keep it fed and watered well. It will go in the greenhouse in the winter for now. I’m not sure how hardy it might be in a smallish pot outside.

Black mondo grass is one of the few ornamental plants that I don’t really like. The plant is fascinating in its coloring, but also extremely difficult to work into a garden effectively for the same reason. Many landscapers and gardeners try to implement groups of these plants into yards and commercial plantings and it never seems to last. The plants don’t seem to last for long in a black grassy mat–they die out in patches and the color doesn’t seem to hold.

Strangely, as little as I like these plants, I have grown them several times, including having started a bunch of them from seed collected from a public park. Most recently, Leon brought two divisions home from a friend’s house and planted them in the woodland garden. They are surviving so far.

My future plans for these plants are to try and find a proper way to show them off and develop some tiny inkling of a liking for them.

I bought a batch of Rose of Sharon shrubs from a mail order house about ten years ago. When they arrived, they were little twigs with a few roots. I planted a few of them around the yard and gave some away, as well.

Rose of Sharon is one of those shrubs that definitely has a season. It isn’t an all-season plant. The leaves are depressingly bland. The shrub’s shape is nothing to brag about, either. But come August, that difficult, quiet month when almost nothing is blooming, the showy Althaea flowers jump up and turn the plain Jane shrub into a Jane Russell superstar.

My future plans for these plants are to be more generous with food and water to coax more blooms from them each year.