I purchased seeds for Geranium pratense “Purple Haze.” I think the packet was 5 seeds and I ended up with three plants, two purplish ones and one green one. This was in 2018. I planted them together in the memory garden. The plain green plant is thriving. The purple ones lag seriously behind but their foliage is really quite striking. I may just have to move the green one so it doesn’t crowd them out and embarrass Purple Haze’s weak growth.

For 2020, I will rearrange these plants to give them more room to spread out, feed them well, and harvest some seeds if there are any. So far, this variety has not proven to be weedy or seedy at all, so that is another excellent trait.

With the bigroot geranium as one of its parents, this naturally occuring hybrid has similar habits as its G. macrorrhizum parent, but is much less sturdy. I received on of these plants many years ago and it has survived among the G. macrorrhizum around it, but has not spread much. The flowers are a nice white color and the leaves color up nicely in the fall. This is one of the few hardy geraniums in my yard that isn’t trying to take over.

My 2020 plans for this plant will be to carve some space around it and feed it to try to give it a fighting chance in the Douglas fir bed.

Another maleficent marauder, this plant came to me through a gardening friend. Hardy geraniums really seem to like our property, because it wasn’t long before this plant was seeding all around the original plant. It grows easily and quickly. It event took hold in the heavily rooted, dry, shady area under the Douglas fir tree. I liked it a lot at first, but too much of a good thing has led me to eradicate it several times. Or maybe I should say “attempt to eradicate it.”

My 2020 plans for this plant are to root it out wherever I find it again and see if I can put a dent in its stranglehold around the Douglas fir and beyond.

Another Annie’s Annuals perennial purchased in 2018 for the memory garden, this is a pretty cool plant. Well, it is pretty, and has cool elements, also. The foliage is a striking gray and intricately cut, making a rosette of wonderful, graphic patterns. Then, the flowers come–dozes of bright orange poppies. And finally, the “horned poppy” starts growing its horns. The seedpods develop at a rapid clip–long, long daggers shooting out from every stem.

In the photo above, you can see the remarkable seed pods. The best thing about the seed pods is that they were full of viable seeds! I planted a bunch of them and they sprouted. I potted them on and they continue to thrive. I’m hoping to have a few more for the garden and a few to share.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to keep it fed and weeded and to grow its offspring up to adulthood so they can go out in the garden this autumn.

I ordered these sun roses from a mail order nursery in 2018 as part of the memory garden. They struggled the first in that former hell strip and I was afraid it was just too dry and full of roots to accommodate them. However, they are pleasantly surprising me this year with a flush of bright flowers in a burnt orangey-red color that contrasts perfectly with the purple geraniums nearby.

These tough little guys don’t need much to survive. I don’t think they really like the chip mulch that is thick on the memory garden, but they have overcome the mulch and found their way to health and beauty. For 2020, I’ll just make sure they get fed as needed and keep the weeds away from them so they can really spread out and provide an even more amazing show next year.

I started a few of these plants about four years ago and like the other pyrenaicum varieties I have, they are spreading generously or dangerously around the garden. I have them in the ground in the orchard bed and the memory garden, and in pots on the driveway, as well. The plant can grow astoundingly quickly and large and produce an enormous amount of flowers. Still, it never reaches showy status. It tops out somewhere between pretty and interesting.

My 2020 plans for these plants will be to root out any extras to slow their spread and enjoy the flowers as they grow and bloom. They take absolutely no care except average water, so no need to feed them or anything special.

I got this plant as a little start many years ago and for whatever reason decided it would be perfect in front of the main living room window along the foundation. Several rhododendrons, far too large for foundation planting, were already there. I placed Miss Kim between them and we’ve pruned the rhodies ruthlessly ever since to let Miss Kim grow up. And now we prune her, too!

The main charm of Miss Kim is her diminutive size. The flowers are more delicate than the S. vulgaris hybrid we have in the yard, and the scent is subtler. But she makes a good show in front of the window every May.

My 2020 plans for this plant will be to prune it right after the flowers fade and before Leon feels compelled to dismember poor Miss Kim.

May is an overwhelming month in the garden–so many plants blooming and looking their best and some many fun surprises.

I’m sure most lilacs smell wonderful, but the old-fashioned lavender ones smell the best/strongest to me. We were lucky to have two of these shrubs on the property when we moved here, one right near Burke Avenue on the property line to the north, and one at the southeast corner of the house. I’ve tackled them both at various times, pruning out old stems and trying to maximize their bloom power and minimize their size. They can be overlooked, but not during those three glorious weeks in May when they sweeten the entire yard with their scent.

I don’t have a lot of photos of these shrubs. I take them for granted after all these years! They sucker freely from the base and keep new stems coming and fresh blooms every year. If I find time in 2020, I’ll cull some of the older, woodier trunks and do some top pruning just to confine the growth and maximize the blooms.

My siblings and I grew up with iris in the garden. My Mom had bearded iris and I remember my Aunt Ruby in Yakima had amazing bearded iris in huge clumps–they really like the eastern side of Washington. The variety I remember Mom having was a simple purple one that I see all over the place. I have no idea what it is called and a Google search was no help at all. I remember what it looked like and its smell because somehow it found its way into my current garden.

This particular iris has proven a much better performer than any other hybrids I have tried. Even when I don’t coddle it, or weed around it, I will get flowers from the clumps every year.

My 2020 plans for these plants is to clean them up after they bloom and feed them to see if I can get more flowers. I only see three flower spikes this year–some years there are a dozen.