When we added a raised bed around the big Douglas fir tree in the front yard, brother Tim brought me a start of this colorful and robust ivy. It was a bit of slow starter and I never thought much about it beyond the fact that it had pretty leaves, but in the last five or six years, it has outgrown its shyness and aggressively claimed more territory. Like many plants and people throughout my life, this vine leverages its good looks to overcome my better judgment.
The leaves are much larger than English ivy and splashed with varying degrees of brilliant white and slate green, along with a very dark green. It spreads faster than English ivy, too, but not in the same smothering way that H. helix does.
My future plans with this plant are to keep it in check, but also show it off–it is stunning! And it is really valuable in the calmer seasons when so few plants are making any statements at all.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this shrubby evergreen tree is older than I am—it came with the house and has doubled in size in 26 years. Normally, I think arborvitae trees are overused, but this one vertical focal point among the rounded rhododendrons at the front of the house is a nice contrast. It was pretty carefree, but like so many of its kind, it is susceptible to snow and ice damage and has fallen apart before towards its apex. Luckily, it recovered without much help.
We have used this tree to hold holiday lights in the past, which is fun. Future plans are minimal—I will just try to keep it alive and green and upright.
English wallflowers are typically grown as annuals or biennials. I started these plants about six years ago, but they don’t seem to mind the Seattle winters and they have survived this entire time, though they look more and more sad with weaker flowering each year. They were quite beautiful in their first two years, with bright yellow, orange and reddish-mauve blooms.
My future plans for these plants will be to take some tip cuttings from them in early spring to see if I can refresh them that way. It looks like there is a lot of good cutting material there, but I have no idea if the resulting plants will be fresh or just as sad as the mother plants.
I had tried to grow a bird’s nest fern when I was young–it was a houseplant that seemed to waste away slowly in front of my eyes. It is a wonder that I became a plant person at all after that hideous, heart-breaking failure.
The hart’s tongue fern is a very similar fern and close relative to the bird’s nest fern, but lucky for it, it is perfectly hardy here and easily grown outdoors.
This tough fern growing in the woodland garden for over a decade adds a nice contrast to the frillier ferns growing in that garden. It has tongue-like leaves that stay crisp and green most of the season.
I noticed this year that the leaves have a lot of what appear to be chew marks, so maybe this plant is making its way into the food web despite being a non-native ornamental from elsewhere in North America.
There are no special future plans for this plant. It seems to be doing well enough without any care and while I appreciate it, I don’t love it enough to want to propagate it or add more anywhere in the yard.
After we added the woodland garden and pond over twenty years ago, I gave Leon this plant as an anniversary gift. It has stayed politely in place and blooms beautifully in early spring. The leaves are handsomely variegated, splashed just enough with white to sparkle, but without looking unnatural.
We do nothing to care for this plant. We water the entire garden a few times in the driest parts of summer and that’s it—but it seems to thrive.
My future plans with this plant are to grab some rooted divisions from around the outside of the plant and pot them up for adding to other parts of the garden or to give away.
I purchased two blueberry varieties via mail order about ten years ago and planted them on the street-side of the orchard garden. One of them remains there, while the other one possibly has faded away. This original plants blooms and gets a few berries each year, but it is not ideally situated—it is crowded out by raspberries and other plants. I added another type of blueberry, the low-growing type that came as twigs with a few roots from an eBay seller. These I tucked under the columnar apple trees in that garden, not expecting to see them again. Surprisingly, they came up the following spring and every spring since, though they do not bloom as of yet.
About four years ago, I added another blueberry from a mail-order source. It was a sad-looking stick and it has taken until now to really put on some growth. It bloomed the last two years, but I haven’t seen any berries.
Because my blueberries haven’t produced many berries, their garden value has come more in the form of autumn color. Blueberries are lovely landscape shrubs regardless of their berries.
My future plans for these plants are to feed them berry food and tend to them a little better to maybe get some real productivity out of them and maybe a blueberry pie one year.
A trouble-free ground cover that I added to the garden decades ago, my Lamium clone looks its best in cool weather, so by mid-spring, it is a lovely blanket of green and white with attractive pink flowers. In autumn, before the first frosts, it again looks fresh and lively.
This plant is very forgiving—I don’t water it in the summer on any regular basis and I accidentally mow it fairly often in the spring. It doesn’t seem to care about any of that and just keeps covering the ground and looking great.
My future plans for this plant are to peel off some rooted divisions and pot them up for giveaways and sales.
We have one golden chain tree that grew from a seed dropped along the north fenceline of our property. It was already a spindly tree when we moved in, so it is likely at least thirty years old now.
I’ve always liked these trees, but they are just SO invasive that guilt comes along with that admiration. I’ve kept the one along the fenceline and I potted up one of its seedlings that I keep outside the greenhouse. I also have a smaller seedling in with my bonsai baby pot plants. And then there are the myriad seedlings the original tree has spawned underneath that I have to keep digging up!
My future plans for these plants are to root any extras out as they pop up from seeds, and to care for the bonsai-bound and patio pot trees to keep them alive and blooming for years to come.
Herbaceous peonies are considered easy and tough, but my first attempt at growing them failed miserably. A friend gave me some starts as a thank you gift many years ago. They survived for many years, but did not thrive. They weren’t in full sun and I think that caused their ultimate demise.
Two years ago, I decided to try again. I ordered a half dozen hybrids from Gilbert H. Wild and planted them in the memory garden. I wasn’t sure what to expect. But despite competing with the huge Douglas fir tree for water and nutrients, the peonies have done well and two of them actually bloomed this year.
The flowers are a little too double for me, but they are showy and I like peony leaves as much as the flowers. They are very different, so they stand out all the time, but especially in the autumn when they color up beautifully before they drop.
My plans for these plants are to keep feeding them and watering them as much as I can. I’m anxious for the other cultivars to bloom–I think there are a few single-flowered types, which I really love.
This golden hop vine came into our lives when we added the pond and the woodland garden. We planted it on a trellis/arbor over the viewing bench twenty years ago and it has gotten more and more boisterous every year since.
Hop vines are pretty coarse for small gardens, but this one, with the lighter chartreuse new growth and nice autumn color paints some nice scenes at different times of year.
Future plans for this plant include trying to stay on top of its rampant growth and propagating it for sales and give-aways by ripping off starts with roots attached in the spring.
