I’m not sure how I missed these marvelous plants when they were blooming in the spring. Maybe it is because I gave a lot of the potted bulbs away and the ones that were left had slug damage that resulted in no photo-worthy flowers.
Forcing these bulbs is something I’ve taken on for many years. The bulbs are relatively inexpensive, so I’ve planted hundreds of them. The forcing pots make excellent gifts once they have chilled for six weeks–they require almost no care to coax the intricate, sometimes fragrant flowers to pop out.
Here are some of the bulbs I planted this fall. I’m leaving them outside to chill high up on shelves away from the slugs that found them last year in the cold frame.
And here is what these flowers have looked like in the past.
Future plans are to continue to force these bulbs every year for gifts and for windowsill displays. The pots will come into the greenhouse a few at a time starting in mid-January to ease them into blooming.
Here is another Arbor Day Foundation tree that I potted up over fifteen years ago. It has grown into a ten-foot tree with attractive leaves and good autumn foliage color. However, it has yet to bloom in its patio pot home.
My future plans for this tree are to root prune it and replace some of the soil while pruning the top. It has been tough to keep this tree watered adequately in the summers, but I think a soil refresh will help with that.
Grown from seed about five years ago, I moved this plant from a pot to the Douglas fir bed two years ago. It was a sink or swim demand of the seedling. Months later, I saw some glowing orange-gold color flaring from that bed in late summer and sure enough, there were Alstroemeria flowers!
Known to be pretty invasive, these plants form tubers as they spread. My clone seems perfectly hardy and able to handle the dry shade under the majestic Douglas fir. It has spread a bit, but the terrain is pretty severe in that bed–I don’t think it will ever take over.
Future plans for this plant are to move a division of it to a patio pot, where I can take better care of it and coax more flowers out of it.
A phoenix of a plant in the memory garden, I had forgotten that I planted three of these herbs there last year. They disappeared among the mulch and other plants. One of them climbed out of the mulch and is looking really heathy right now, however.
Thymus is a great plant family–not only do we get some great culinary herbs, but the whole family is a fun group of ground covers. I love the smell of this one best, with its lemony spice.
My future plans for this plant are to keep an eye on it and save it from any agressive mulch that tries to cover it permanently. If it does better, I’ll look at propagating it or adding a few new types to that garden.
The osoberry is a shrub I’ve always admired because it is very early to bloom and its mode of growth, with early perky new growth and pretty white drooping flowers, says spring is here like no other native plant. I added one to my native plant garden in April of 2020. It isn’t big enough to bloom yet, but it has settled in and grown well.
I see pictures of these shrubs online that have dozens of berries, but I’ve hardly ever seen a berry on any of the plants I’ve been around. I don’t know if that is timing or birds! But they are edible for humans, too.
Future plans for this plant are to pamper it a bit and hope it reaches its full glory in a year or two so it can herald spring for me and hungry pollinators!
I started fortnight lily seeds about ten years ago when I was on a major kick of growing bulbous plants from seed. This plant grew quickly and flowered in about three years from seed. It has gone through tough times the last few years, having died back in its pot. It grew back well this year but hasn’t bloomed for a while.
The flowers are a showy mix of white, yellow, and blue, in a graceful, open iris-like form. The leaves are pure iris–spear-like and plentiful (when happy).
My future plans for this plant are to plant it into the memory garden. Seattle is considered a Zone 8 hardiness zone, and this plant is supposed to be hard to Zone 8, so I’ll give it a chance to take up some room in that sunny bed. I think it might really like that.
The inside-out flower is aptly named, as the flowers do look like they’be been turned inside out. This is a lovely native ground cover that I added to the Douglas fir bed about ten years ago. I don’t remember where the plant came from originally.
The foliage is airy and graceful and the flowers come up in May on tall spikes and add more air charm. The plant is not ephemeral for me, in that it doesn’t disappear in the dry summer–the foilage stays put almost year-round.
My future plans for this plant are to grab divisions from around its edges in the spring so I have Vancouveria to share with friends and neighbors.
This unusual clematis came to me via a mail order catalog about seven years ago. It has had some good years with lots of flowers and some much less successful years. This year, for example, the pot it was in on the patio dried out early on and the vine never really got going. Then, when it was finally getting some growth, it came down with a bad case of powdery mildew.
Despite the challenges, the flowers are very worthwhile. They are an unusal shape and hue and are extraordinarily beautiful.
My future plans for this vine that can’t really hold itself up is to add some better soil to its pot and a decent trellis to fasten it to so that next year Rooguchi will cover itself with blue bells.
Leon brought home a cutting of this plant about three years ago. I potted it up and pretty much forgot about it. Apparently thriving on neglect, that cutting grew quickly into a blooming-sized plant.
The flowers are really pretty, too, and it can get whitish berries, too, but I don’t think mine set any fruit the year if bloomed.
My future plans for this trailing plant are to repot it into a bigger terra cotta pot next spring. It seems to grow pretty well on the fence along the patio, so I’ll put it up on the fence again in the spring and see if it rewards me with flowers in 2021.
I’ve liked snapdragons for a long time and I’ve grown them from seed many times over the years. They tend to be more perennial here in Seattle, but they don’t live forever for me. The latest snapdragon seeds I started were of a hanging basket variety and the plants are very different–very bushy and daintier than the upright types. My last remaining plant did not bloom well this year, but it was on the shady patio.
I don’t seem to have any photos of this plant blooming, but the flowers are white and yellow. Assuming it survives the winter outside, I’ll move the pot to the sunny patio next year and feed the plant to see if I can coax into throwing a lot more flowers.
