Commonly known as largeleaf avens, this lovely native plant was added to my native garden as a bonus plant in a pot with a different native shrub. This is another plant family I’m very fond of, from the native prairie smoke that grows near our cabin, to the border plants, like Geum borisii and “Mrs. Bradshaw.” More subtle than all of those, but with its own brightness and charm, comes this seemingly easy plant. It has bright yellow flowers, fresh green leaves with really large leaves for a Geum at the base of the plant.

My future plans for this plant are to grow more of them and plant them around the native plant garden randomly. Since the plant set seeds, I planted some in a pot in the greenhouse and also sprinkled a bunch around this original plant.

This plant, the Society Garlic, was somewhat unusual as a garden plant in Seattle until about ten or twelve years ago when it started popping up in nurseries and garden centers everywhere. It is a fun bulbous plant from southern Africa that has fairly plain green strap-like leaves with a hint of gray and bright pink blooms that put on a real show. The first time I was really impressed by this plant was a trip to Bainbridge Island. There were two interesting plants in outside planters, one a crinum lily and the other a fine specimen of Society Garlic.

This past autumn, we were in Prescott, Arizona visiting our friends Arliss and Mike and in their high desert garden, they had one of these plants blooming. When I got home and rejoined the Pacific Bulb Society, they had a seed and bulb exchange and seeds of this plant were available so I asked for some. They germinated readily and I have about six strong seedlings in the greenhouse With any luck, I’ll have a few plants like the above in the memory garden and in pots around the patio next year.

One of my seedlings bloomed! Here is what it looks like:

Purchased from Annie’s Annuals in 2017 for the memory garden, this is a more elegant version of the popular red-hot-poker. The plant grows to about three feet high for me with long, thin, grass-like leaves and g late spring flower spikes of well-spaced orange and yellow tubular blooms. It tends to bloom again when cool weather returns in the early autumn, and I’m hopeful it will do that again.

My future plans for this plant are to divide it (possibly this autumn) and plant more around the memory garden. I’ll also feed it in September to try to coax it to get a few more bloom spikes before it shuts down for the winter.

The Hoary Scullcap is native to the southeastern US. Another gift from brother Tim, this is one of my favorite plant families. I particularly like the whitish felting on the stems of this plant, which set off the azure blooms perfectly. The plant was added to the memory garden in 2019.

My future plans for this plant are to keep it watered (it was pretty limp last week before I watered the memory garden) and fed and watch it fill out into the more shrublike perennial it is destined to be.

This plant is fairly new–it was a gift from brother Tim last year and I planted it in the memory garden. I think of gentians as delicate woodland plants, so I wasn’t sure how this one would do in the former hell strip. Surprisingly, it came up strong and actually bloomed pretty well with striking light blue four-petaled flowers.

My future plans for this gem are to keep it watered and fed and possibly get seeds off of it to germinate next spring.

My boss gave me this plant back in the spring. I’ve tried Martha Washington geraniums before, but I’m not sure I ever tried a Regal geranium. I have been extremely surprised by this plant–it has had three flushes of bloom sitting on my desk in fairly low light (about 18″ from a north-facing window). The only care I’ve given it is a few pieces of Jobe’s organic plant spikes and consistent watering.

The flowers are spectacular shades of magenta, mauve, maroon, and purple.

My future plans for this plant are to keep it in the office as long as we have an office (we’re exploring 100% work-from-home) and let it go cool and dry in the winter, then rev it back up with a repotting and some fertilizer in early spring.

I purchased three of these ground covery plants in 2018 to add to the memory garden. They have struggled to settle in the dry, barren former hell strip, but this year has seen some positive growth and some flowers. Known as wall germander, I am impressed by the shine, dark green leaves and the flowers a bright shade of pink that contrasts nicely with the foliage.

My future plans for these plants are to keep them fed and trimmed and hope they create a solid, drought-resistant ground cover in the next year or so.

When you ask me what my favorite season is, I might answer “berry season!” I pretty much love any and all berries, and raspberries are no exception. Most people would have a special area of their garden set aside for raspberries and tie them to wires and keep them tame and tidy. I’ve inadvertently taken a differnt path–I grow them in my borders and they have increased their footprint over time so that now there are probably 100 plants or more, in both gold- and red-berried cultivars.

I would guess I’ve had these red raspberries in the garden for twenty years. They never fail to produce two crops of delicious berries, mostly in the bed on the north side of the driveway. They lean way over the driveway and the car gets less and less room as the seaon progresses, but I don’t want to cut them back because, well, BERRIES!!!

My future plans for these plants are to remove old canes in late winter and trim the remaining canes down to about two feet tall. I’ll feed them some organic berry fertilizer and stake some of the taller ones that lean into the driveway so there might still be room for the car.

Much hated throughout most of the year, but much-loved in August when the delicious berries ripen. This is a Class C noxious weed in King County, which means it is not selected for control because there is no way to control it now, it’s already EVERYWHERE.

This was an important plant from my childhood. My siblings and I would harvest berries every summer, creating scaffolds to reach inside the huge bramble thickets in the field behind our back yard. We even had names for the particularly large, sweet berries we came across once in awhile–we called them Plumpa Plumpas.

I have tried to grow domesticated blackberries and almost gotten none of them. Either they never ripen, get bugs, or the birds get them before I do. I finally gave up and just cultivated one Himalayan blackberry plant in a raised bed on the south side of our property. Now I get hundreds of blackberries every year!

I have some guilt given the fact that this is a noxious weed that is causing disaster with native plants and ecosystems across the world. The County recommends control in wilderness areas and natural lands being restored with native plants. Since we don’t have any of those in close proximity, I’m going to enjoy my guilty berry pleasures for a few more years.

This plant has to be pruned and tied to keep it in bounds, so I’ll stay on top of that in the future. I’m working on harvesting enough berries to make a pie this year, which would be my first blackberry pie.

Yet another showy begonia to highlight from my collection. I grew these plants from seed starting early in 2018 and they have proven to be pretty hardy. I winter them over in the greenhouse in dry pots and they come back and bloom beautifully in the summer.

Begonias are perfect plants for our back patio. There is a mix of sun and shade there and it seems to be just the right combination of the two for this family of plants. I like the dark foliage and the flowers show up nicely with brilliant pink male and female flowers over several months.

My future plans for these plants are to keep moving them into larger pots, feed them well in the spring and enjoy them as a perfect patio plant.