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.

Another survivor in the garden, I planted this, my favorite of the autumn-flowering anemones, more than twenty years ago. It never really took hold and seemed to disappear after a year or two. But last year when I was cleaning up that bed near the fence in the orchard garden, I saw one anemone leaf. This year, the plant has grown and actually bloomed!

Interestingly, these plants are considered invasive by some. For me, they barely survive! I’ve always loved the simple white flowers at a height where they can really be appreciated.

My future plans for this plant are to feed it well with some leaf mulch and a Jobes organic fertilizer spike in the spring and hope it grows to full size and puts on a bigger show next year.

Plant breeders have really done a number with heavenly bamboo. There is nothing heavenly about the little muffin-shaped Nandinas that are being planted all over Seattle in commercial landscapes and newly constructed residential developments. Luckily, the heavenly bamboo we have in the woodland garden really is heavenly, planted before the muffin bamboos were introduced (twenty+ years ago)–it has that slim, bamboo-like stature and long, graceful leaves. It looked better for us before it was competing with other plants in the same bed.

Nandina gets white flowers that aren’t showy and orange-red berries that are, but I’ve read that the berries can be toxic to songbirds so I pull them off the plant just in case.

Our heavenly bamboo shrub is nearing eight feet tall. My future plants are to strategically prune it down a bit so it will not have its canopy mingled with the maple tree it is growing next to.

The Japanese holly fern is another very successful fern inhabiting our woodland garden. There are two large ones that look fresh and bright even now, in September. About two-feet across, they are only about a foot tall.

You wouldn’t expect a fern to provide contrasting foliage to other ferns, but the solid leaves of holly fern are very different from the doily-esque leaves of the nearby common male ferns.

My future plans for these plants are to grab some leaves with spores and spread them around the greenhouse. Maybe I’ll get some baby holly ferns next year.

The male fern has survived well in the woodland garden–there are three or four sizeable ones there. They jump up all at once in spring with their myriad, intricate fronds expanding rapidly. Not native here, it still seems extremely happy and a bit showier than the native sword fern.

My future plans for these plants are to remember to clean up the old fronds before the new ones arrive in the spring–it makes for a more spectacular fiddlehead show. I will also pull a few fronds with spores on them into the greenhouse to see if maybe some sporeslings result.

We may have had lady ferns planted in the woodland garden at one time, but they have died out since then and only left male ferns. However, some lady fern sporelings appear in pots in the greenhouse on a fairly regular basis, so I still have one that I planted out in the native plant garden this year. These are graceful and impressive ferns, reaching a grand size. Ferns are notoriously useless as food web plants, but I figure they probably serve a greater ecological purpose than humans realize, so I’m planting them, anyway. Besides, they are beautiful.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to keep it watered well through the autumn and pull the mulch away as needed so it doesn’t interfere with the fiddleheads next spring.

We added a small coral bark maple when we first added the pond and woodland garden on the north side of the house. It was a pretty little tree for a while, but then it grew into something more, something spectacular. It brings beauty to every season, but really comes into its own in the autumn when the leaves are gold against the coral-red branches.

My future plans for this plant my include grafting attempts onto some other maple rootstocks that I have grown from seed. I’ll also work to get better photos of the tree, which is over twenty feet tall now.

Seven years ago, I read that the pineapple guava is hardy here in Seattle. I’d seen the plant sold as a houseplant in catalogs before and I’d always been intrigued by the interesting flowers and tropical fruit potential.

I purchased a small plant and put it in the orchard garden where it has been surviving and slowly growing ever since. We’ve had some pretty cold winters and the guava stays strong. It put on quite a bit of growth this year–approaching three feet. I don’t know if it will ever get large enough to bloom or set fruit, but as long as it is willing to try, I’m willing to let it.

My future plans for this plant are to keep it fed and watered and wait patiently for flowers and fruit–hopefully, in my lifetime!