I started these impressive perennials from seed over twenty years ago. They are growing on the street side of the orchard garden, seeding themselves around a bit every few years so that they haven’t died out altogether.

When growing happily, these plants can get six feet tall with dozens of pincushion-like (scabiosa-like, if you know what scabiosa flowers look like) flowers. The color is a soft cream and white. My own plants are too crowded to look their best.

Here is a Cephalaria survivor in November of 2020…notice that it is throwing up buds even at this late date.

Future plans for these plants are to move a division or two to the memory garden where they will do more than survive–and I expect their flowers will attract a lot of pollinators there in a sunnier spot.

Chickweed is a global plant that started in Eurasia and with human help has now conquered the world. It has also conquered my greenhouse and all my potted plants. I don’t particularly mind this weed except when it completely overwhelms more delicate potted treasures. It is easy to remove because all of its growth comes from single stem at ground level–I can just clip it off there with some fingernails and I’ve slowed down its takeover for another month or two.

Chickweed is edible and doesn’t taste bad–its pretty bland. I can eat it right out of my pots. However, it can be toxic if you eat too much and there isn’t a lot of guidance about what too much means.

I try hard to clip all the plants back in the greenhouse and pots before they go to seed to slow them down, but so far I haven’t gotten anywhere–they come up in spring and again in fall in virtually any open ground.

My future plans for these plants are to keep after them and admire their tenacity.

The western sword fern is to top fern of the Pacific Northwest. It may not be the most beautiful fern, but it is by far the most common and most noticed. We have had these ferns in the woodland garden and I moved one to the Douglas fir bed where it continues to thrive in the dry shade of a forest giant. Sporelings of these ferns pop up in pots, too, and so we have a few of them as patio plants.

Where happy, these ferns can create a dramatic, huge cicle of fronds. They are evergreen, but to keep them looking fresh most gardeners remove all the old fronds in late winter before the fiddleheads appear.

Indigenous people used this plant as a topical painkiller and they ate the rhizomes in tough times.

Note that this last photo is of a sword fern that we had in a hanging basket on the fence. It didn’t get watered enough and it turned brown. You can see that it isn’t dead, though, and next year it will leaft out per usual and look great again. These are tough plants!

My future plans for these are to mix some into the native plant garden and to keep some in pots on the back patio where they really thrive and keep things looking cool and easy.

The ribbon fern, or Cretan brake fern, features in my On the Ledge Sow-Along experiment related to Jane Perrone’s amazing podcast. In the late winter, she encourages her listeners to grow houseplants from seeds (or spores) as another way to appreciate houseplants and increase our collections.

I found these spores online and ordered them and followed the planting instructions without bothering to really sterilize anything–just starting mix in a plastic, lidded container and some water. And then wait. And wait. A green growth started on the soil after a few weeks, and then the prothallus followed and spread across the entire container. More recently, I believe that the sporophytes have developed. They are starting to look like tiny ferns. Dozens of tiny ferns. After about seven months, the tallest one is still only about an inch tall and doesn’t have any true, recognizable ribbon fern fronds yet.

I brought the container home from the office so I can watch the sporelings better. My plan is to pot up about 20 of them into separate little pots in the spring and move them to the greenhouse. I will give some away and keep a few for home and office.

I’m not 100% sure of the identify of this maidenhair fern, purchased as a houseplant about four years ago now. Maidnehair ferns are infamous as difficult houseplants and we’ve certainly killed our share of them. We’ve tried them in the kitchen and the bathroom and inevitably they shrivel up and die. This one did, as well, but I grabbed it before it was completely dead and moved it out to the greenhouse. I forgot about it for a few weeks and when I looked at it again, it was bushy and green again!

This plant doesn’t seem to mind the cool temperatures in the greenhouse in the winter. I moved it to a fish bowl that increases the humidity even more and it seems really happy in there. It doesn’t exactly fit inside anymore, but I’m not going to get too worried about aesthetics–just having the plant thriving is a thrill!

My future plans for this plant are to find a better terrarium to put it in–maybe a fish tank that I could populate with other humidity-loving, delicate plants.

We’ve had the native maidenhair fern in our garden a few times. The first was about twenty years ago in the woodland garden near the pond, where one fern really took off and grew beautifully, but then faded away. This year, when I added my new native garden, I added A. pedatum.

These ferns are remarkable in their delicate, intricate beauty. Each frond is a miracle of design. And a well-growing plant is awe-inspiring. My new maidenhair isn’t well-growing yet, but it is on its way to that level.

My future plans for this plant are to keep up with watering it during dry spells in its second year and making sure it gets the right amount of shade. Beyond that, I want to grab some spores off of it and start them in a terrarium in the greenhouse next year.

Likely this plant was rescued from a workplace, but I don’t honestly remember—I know I’ve had it about five years.  Known to be tough as nails, these plants are considered impossible to kill, but I’ve come close to doing just that.  The plant was down to one living leaf this spring.  I took leaf cuttings as an experiment, having seen someone on the web do this.  The leaf cuttings have rooted and formed tubers, but they have not yet leafed out. I have them in the greenhouse now.  The parent plant just got another healthy leaf. 

These can be attractive plants when well-grown, but I find them a bit boring.  I will likely get rid of them all except maybe one baby if the leaf cuttings ever leaf out. I’m not sure they will survive the cold temps in the greenhouse, but I’m hoping the scale that the mother plant has had off and on won’t survive the cold and that the plants will.

We have several varieties of Japanese maple, including the coral bark maple already highlighted, and this graceful form.  Currently, in a pot on the patio, this plant lived in the woodland garden for a while, but we couldn’t find a suitable place for it.  We eventually potted it up and it is growing just fine now, although it has grown from both above and below the graft.

A patio pot suits this plant because we can really see the delicacy of the leaves close up.  This is especially valuable in the autumn when the leaves color up in glorious oranges and reds.

Future plans for this plant are to clip the growth from below the graft so the strength of the tree goes into the lacier leaved branches.  We’ll keep it watered and fed and repot it as needed.

I ordered Biophytum seeds online after hearing about this plant on the On the Ledge podcast. They were listed as an interesting terrarium plant, so I thought I’d give them a try. Their common name is “little tree plant” because of the way their long leaves grow, giving even small plants a tree-like appearance. I grew three plants in a terrarium for about eight months–then, when I forgot to water, they died. Luckily, they had bloomed (very small, nondescript flowers) and set seed, so a seedling popped up in a nearby pot and has survived ever since.

The species name refers to the fact that the plant folds up like the sensitive plant. I only have photos of the plants folded up!

I am hoping to keep this last survivor alive through the winter in the window and get seeds off it that I can start or give away. They are cute to have around, even as a ground cover in pots with larger plants. However, I read online that they can become weedy in greenhouses, so I’ll keep an eye out for that–I have enough weeds in there!

More picturesque, if not as potentially tall, as Douglas fir, western red cedars are magnificent trees. They have been revered by native people for thousands of years, and now they are revered by me.

We don’t have room to have a full-grown western red cedar tree on our city lot–they can get 200 feet tall, with huge spread and massive, buttressed trunks. But the house across the street has a couple of trees that were left when the new houses were built about a dozen years ago. These trees drop seeds around and the seeds occassionally start in the ground or in pots here in our yard. I have been potting up the seedlings for several years, planning to bonsai some and possibly put others in larger pots on the patio.

They don’t seem to mind growing in pots, so long as they never really dry out–even when I let them get way to potbound, which happens surprisingly quickly.

My future plans are to prune the roots of these plants late next winter and trim them up a bit to prepare them for their futures as tonsais (my name for the half-assed bonsais I intend to produce).