About ten years ago I got interested in native plants and ironweeds were one of the species that caught my interest. I just ended up with one seedling. It grew a few feet the first year and didn’t bloom. I was disappointed in it and just plopped it into a corner of the garden. The next year there was a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk moment when this plant started climbing toward the sky. It reached about eight feet tall before it bloomed with bright yellow flowers.

I’ve learned to pinch the stems back in June or July to keep them shorter and stronger so I don’t have to stake them. My near-future plans for this plant are to water it because it is wilty right now during our Mediterranean summer. I don’t have room for more of these plants so I’ll just enjoy the one I have. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to seed around at all, so it isn’t invasive like some of my seed experiment progeny.

I know I’ve had this shrub for a really long time, but I don’t remember where it came from. I’m surprised I remember its name! I had it in the garden for a while, but then moved it to a pot. It is probably very pot-bound after all these years and I’ve been too lazy to repot it. However, it blooms twice a year–once in the spring, then it really suffers in the hot weather and come September, it starts to bloom again.

My future plans for this forgiving plant are to pull it out of the pot in late winter and add fresh, fertile soil and prune the plant back to strong canes.

Here is a surprise survivor in the front of the orchard garden. I planted two of these hardy fuchsia plants over twenty years ago. Since then, the bed they lived in has been inundated with raspberry canes, a winter hazel shrub, and more. But when I went out to the get the mail a few weeks ago, one fuchsia branch had found its way out of the crowd and into the spotlight. This is a particularly graceful hardy fuchsia cultivar with delicate leaves and blooms.

Future plans for these plants are to add a calendar reminder to dig under the other shrubs next July/August and get some viable cuttings to start a few more of them to plant in some better spaces around the yard.

I’ve had these everbearing golden raspberries for at least twenty years. They are growing at the front of the orchard garden along the street (N. 137th) where any neighbors walking by can enjoy them. These are everbearing plants, so I get berries in July and again in September. They are robust plants with deep shiny green leaves and whitish canes.

My future plans for these plants are to pot some of the many runners up and give them away. I’ll clean up the old canes in the very early spring and feed the entire bed with organic berry food.

I started seeds of woodland tobacco early this spring and the resulting plants are just now coming into bloom (early September). I’ve grown these before and had them reach much bigger size–they can get over five feet tall with their big flowers hanging down gracefully. My largest one is maybe going to reach two feet this year. I planned to use them to fill in some blank spots in the memory garden as some perennials die back. They have been planted out in two spots, but they don’t seem too happy about the exposure/soil there. Or maybe it is the lack of water. I have only been watering when really necessary to keep things alive. I also kept one plant in a pot on the back patio that just gets an hour or two of sun a day, and that one has grown well and is blooming now, too.

My future plans with these plant are to keep the potted ones in the greenhouse over winter to see if they make it through and get a big headstart next year. If they make it, I’ll pot them into larger pots and feed them well and see if I can get them up to four or five feet tall next year.

Commonly known as largeleaf avens, this lovely native plant was added to my native garden as a bonus plant in a pot with a different native shrub. This is another plant family I’m very fond of, from the native prairie smoke that grows near our cabin, to the border plants, like Geum borisii and “Mrs. Bradshaw.” More subtle than all of those, but with its own brightness and charm, comes this seemingly easy plant. It has bright yellow flowers, fresh green leaves with really large leaves for a Geum at the base of the plant.

My future plans for this plant are to grow more of them and plant them around the native plant garden randomly. Since the plant set seeds, I planted some in a pot in the greenhouse and also sprinkled a bunch around this original plant.

This plant, the Society Garlic, was somewhat unusual as a garden plant in Seattle until about ten or twelve years ago when it started popping up in nurseries and garden centers everywhere. It is a fun bulbous plant from southern Africa that has fairly plain green strap-like leaves with a hint of gray and bright pink blooms that put on a real show. The first time I was really impressed by this plant was a trip to Bainbridge Island. There were two interesting plants in outside planters, one a crinum lily and the other a fine specimen of Society Garlic.

This past autumn, we were in Prescott, Arizona visiting our friends Arliss and Mike and in their high desert garden, they had one of these plants blooming. When I got home and rejoined the Pacific Bulb Society, they had a seed and bulb exchange and seeds of this plant were available so I asked for some. They germinated readily and I have about six strong seedlings in the greenhouse With any luck, I’ll have a few plants like the above in the memory garden and in pots around the patio next year.

One of my seedlings bloomed! Here is what it looks like:

Purchased from Annie’s Annuals in 2017 for the memory garden, this is a more elegant version of the popular red-hot-poker. The plant grows to about three feet high for me with long, thin, grass-like leaves and g late spring flower spikes of well-spaced orange and yellow tubular blooms. It tends to bloom again when cool weather returns in the early autumn, and I’m hopeful it will do that again.

My future plans for this plant are to divide it (possibly this autumn) and plant more around the memory garden. I’ll also feed it in September to try to coax it to get a few more bloom spikes before it shuts down for the winter.

The Hoary Scullcap is native to the southeastern US. Another gift from brother Tim, this is one of my favorite plant families. I particularly like the whitish felting on the stems of this plant, which set off the azure blooms perfectly. The plant was added to the memory garden in 2019.

My future plans for this plant are to keep it watered (it was pretty limp last week before I watered the memory garden) and fed and watch it fill out into the more shrublike perennial it is destined to be.