A 2018 purchase from Annie’s Annuals, this striking perennial has come into its own this year. The chartreuse flowers make a great backdrop to the spring bulbs around it. The plant doesn’t seem to mind the dry, desolate hell strip that is the memory garden.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to add some good neighbors next to and around it to complement its architectural beauty.

These bulbs were purchased as Alliums, but there was a name change since then. I think I started with a lot of these–maybe 25–a dozen years ago or so, and now I’m down to one! Inevitably, though, I will buy more. It is a gem in the garden, with fairly nondescript oniony leaves and then great stalks of fascinating flowers in May or June.

The flowers get about thirty inches tall, so they stand out in the garden. My 2020 plans for the remaining bulb is to feed it soon to strengthen it and to watch for new bulbs on sale in the fall that I can add to the gardens around the yard.

My favorite garden writer, Christopher Lloyd, called aggressive plants “thugs.” Scutellaria altissima forces me to come up with a stronger term! I purchased seeds of this plant from Pinetree Garden Seeds around 1996 under the name Dracocephalum moldavica. It wasn’t until TODAY (4.20.20) that I actually discovered online what the actual identity of this plant is–the Tall Skullcap, Scutellaria altissima! It appears to be a native plant in the Northeast.

The seeds grew well and I planted a bunch of seedlings along the driveway and they performed well. They get a burst of fresh mint-like foliage in the spring and then cute wands of bluish tiny skullcaps in May. Bees love them. Unfortunately, they are aggressive spreaders. My new term for these invasive types is maleficent marauders. Before long, these maleficent marauders were springing up all over the driveway bed, and in some cracks in the driveway itself. They didn’t seem to be spreading beyond that, so I wasn’t as concerned about them becoming an environmental disaster. However, this last weekend, I walked past the neighbor’s house and noticed that she has a bunch of these plants coming up in a flower bed that is a long way from my driveway bed! Yikes! Time to do some eradicating.

My 2020 plans for these plants are 1) to not let them go to seed and 2) to dig out as many of them as I can and replace them with something more polite–maybe some native columbines and Jacob’s ladders.

These are fairly new additions–I ordered two of them from Annie’s Annuals in fall of 2018. The plants have grown together into a big mounded plant that right now is completely covered with blooms. Last fall, they bloomed for months on end. There is lot to like about a plant that blooms for that long. The foliage, when you can see it through the blooms, is handsome.

I also started seeds of the species Geranium pyrenaicum and ended up with one plant which I transplanted to the garden at the same time I planted the “Bill Wallis” duo. This seedling has very similar if less prolific flowers. The place it seems to be outshining the named variety is in volunteering. In fact, I’m on the verge of rooting it out altogether because there are dozens of babies near the parent plant. Is it generous or dangerous?

For 2020, I’ve already fed these plants with organic food and will follow up in a few months with more food and a shredded leaf topdressing in the fall.

If I remember right, I brought a few of these plants from the rental house where we lived prior to moving here. They are a graceful, vigorous perennial with long leaf stems and small greenish-white flowers dangling underneath in spring. The flowers are subtly sweet-smelling, too, and the plants spread, but pretty politely via rhizomes and mine do not set seeds.

The best thing about these tough beauties is that they survive right next to the big Douglas fir in the yard where they are fully competing with the massive tree and ivy, as well.

For 2020, I’ll do what I always do to support these plants–nothing! They are completely self-sufficient!

There is too much going on to write much about all that is flowering at this bloomiferous time, but I’ll put some photos here and hope to add captions when things slow down.

I don’t remember where I got the cuttings for this Mexican Orange Blossom shrub, but I know that I started it myself about fifteen or more years ago. We planted it against the fence in the woodland garden and we’ve been able to prune it close to the fence. It blooms nicely every spring and the flowers have a nice scent. The leaves have an odor that is unpleasant to me, but it isn’t strong and I only notice it when I brush up against them or have my nose right in the middle of the plant.

Here is what the plant looks like today:

For 2020, we’ll just keep this plant trimmed and fed adn enjoy it as a backdrop to the koi pond.

Purchased from Raintree Nursery about seven years ago, this interesting tree hasn’t lived up to its potential. I think the main problem is sunlight. I have it in the darkest corner of the orchard garden and it was sunny when I first planted it there, but now there are taller trees in front of it and also extra tall vehicles in the driveway. The tree sets a few fruit each year, but they never seem to ripen fully and/or some varmint steals them.

There are six varieties on the tree, but only the four tags are left. The above image is what the tree looks like this week. My 2020 plans for the tree are to fertilize it with organic spikes and to try to clear some of the shade in front of it so it has a better chance of setting fruit. I may try to pollinate some of the flowers, as well, since I haven’t seen a lot of pollinators in that part of the garden.

Sweet cherries are second only to blackberries as my favorite fruit. I purchased this tree from Raintree Nursery about eight years ago, I think. I thought I was getting the super dwarfing rootstock, but this is on Gisela 5, which is just a semi-dwarfing rootstock and explains why the tree climbed to fifteen feet in just a few short years while I stood by stunned. I have not had good luck getting any cherries off of this tree. It blooms well every year and appears to set fruit, but some years they all drop off (pollination issue, I guess), and the few years when it really gets a crop of cherries, the birds (or some animal) seem to grab them just before they are ripe enough for humans.

I took the drastic step of cutting the main trunk of the tree way back last year. The tree is more managable now and the sunlight reaches a lot more plants behind it! We’ll see if I get any cherries this year! Here is how the tree looks today.

I will work to find more photos of this tree and add them later. 2020 Goals for the tree are to figure out a way to net the entire tree and keep the cherries to myself.

Another fine addition from brother Tim, this is the Scorpion Senna that I planted in the brick bed next to the front porch. I would guess I’ve had this plant at least fifteen years. It grows as a leggy, twiggy shrub that has delicate pinnate leaves and brilliant, clean yellow flowers.

I cut this shrub back hard after flowering–down to 3-4 feet tall. It wants to soar a lot taller than I can accommodate which creates a bit of tension, but we’re muddling through.

Here are some photos of the flowers and plant taken today.

For 2020, my biggest effort will be to whack this strong grower back so it can branch out and bloom well again next year.