The Douglas aster just joined my plant family this spring. My project during the COVID-19 lockdown was to add a native plant garden where some of my front lawn used to be. I was excited that the local native plant nursery had Douglas asters for sale in four-inch pots. I purchased three of them and set them out near the sidewalk. They have done really well there and are now blooming handsomely at close to three feet tall.
My future plans for these plants are to take divisions in early fall to increase my numbers of them and start planting them in the memory garden. I have other perennial asters there, but they are not the Seattle natives and pollinators seem ambivalent about them.
This plant features one of the silliest of common names, “Joe Pye Weed.” It is a bold herbaceous perennial–really bold! Mine are about seven feet tall this year and maybe four feet wide. I started some from seed for the south side of the driveway over twenty years ago. Those original plants died out eventually, but not before they seeded around a little, and some volunteers came up on the north side of the driveway. I have at least two plants there now.
Pollinators love the unusual lavender flowers. New leaves have a purple tinge, too, and their arrangement is attractive around the tall stems.
These plants don’t ask for much so I’ll just keep enjoying the flowers that I have to look up to and the pollinators that they attract.
I wanted some lilies for the memory garden that looked somewhat natural and these bulbs were on sale at Gilbert H. Wild, so I purchased five of them.
They bloomed the first time last year at about 4 feet tall and with just a few flowers. This year, however, they are much more robust and tall and floriferous!
I plan to keep these bulbs fed and watered and enjoy their spicy fragrance and graceful blooms. The anthers on these flowers are amazingly huge!
Native to the US, but not to Seattle, this mint relative known as lemon mint has a subtle beauty and a snappy fragrance to its leaves. I grew these plants from seed years ago and I have a fond memory of being surprised late in the season when they finally bloomed–they weren’t spectacular, but the flowers and bracts are pretty and they last a long time.
This year’s plants were started from seeds early and eventually put out on the patio and the head of the driveway. The patio plants have been happier with partial shade. The plants in the sunny driveway got to bloom, but then one missed watering and poof! They were fried.
Now that these are blooming, it seems like growing a few more next year to add to the memory garden might be a great idea, as I think pollinators will love them–though they don’t find them back on the patio. This plant is edible, too, so I may add it to a salad or make some tea with it.
I’m guessing this B. davidii cultivar is White Profusion, but I’m not exactly sure. I don’t remember where or when I got this shrub that I planted along the north property line, now bordering the orchard garden. I’m guessing it was at least fifteen years ago. The shrub is pretty big now and produces very full flower clusters of a clean white–but only white for a week or so and then they pass on to brown.
One reason to grow B. davidii is that it normally attracts some great pollinators. It isn’t called Butterfly Bush for nothing. Maybe because mine are in a shady area now, I don’t see as many pollinators as I’d like. B. davidii is a noxious alien weed here in Seattle, To my knowledge, however, mine is a sterile hybrid–I haven’t ever seen a seedling.
Keeping this shrub controlled is challenging–it has several thick trunks. I cut it back pretty ruthlessly every spring. I’ll keep doing that going forward and maybe try to prune it again after a few months to get flowers at a lower level–those in the photos are above six feet, and the shrub is shooting up to fifteen feet!
Purchased from an online source about seven years ago, this plant has just come into its own the last couple of years. Unlike the dozens of April-blooming Clivia miniata clones I have, this plant blooms in July and has smaller tubular flowers of a bright red with green tips.
The leaves of this plant are narrow, strap-like and dark green. I got seeds off of it last year, but they did not germinate–if it sets seed again, I’ll be more careful in germinating them in the house.
My 2020 plans for this plant are to move it back outside after it finishes flowering. I will wait to divide it until next spring–it looks like I can get three divisions from the one pot so far. I might try freezing some pollen from some of the miniata clones and then pollinate this plant with the frozen pollen to see if I can get some interesting seedlings–it would be a fun, if long term (minimum five years to see flowers) experiment.
There are several of these vines currently in the greenhouse that are volunteers from plants I grew several years ago to twine up Leon’s “Pod” sculpture along the driveway.
I’ve grown variants of these vines before that had red flowers and darker green leaves–I liked them better than the lighter clone these seedlings represent. They have light green, delicate foliage, lots of tendrils, and orange flowers that look like little guppies to me.
Since this plant is a tender perennial (I’ve had them winter over outside before in mild winters), I plan to take good care of the biggest seedling in the greenhouse and next spring, I’ll plant it next to the “Pod” again with some purple morning glories–that makes a great combination!
We brought a start of this plant from our rental house, so we’ve had it 25 years in this garden. It is a survivor, living on in a somewhat shady position, assaulted by bindweed, with little water or fertilizer. Every year, it blooms reliably with its showy, slightly fragrant flowers.
My future plans for this plant are to divide it and move a division out into a better position where it can be taken care of and really put on a flower display.
I feel very lucky to have one of these plants blooming now in the greenhouse. I started seeds in early spring, then transplanted about five healthy seedlings to small pots and transitioned them to the greenhouse. It was too cold and wet for them in there and they damped off, one by one, until I thought they had all joined the great compost heap in the sky. But hidden under some more boisterous seedlings, this one vine hung on. When the weather started warming up, so did this plant. It is by no means vigorous or robust, but it has grown at a fair clip and surprised me last weekend when I saw a couple of perfect white flowers open up.
My 2020 plans for this plant are to coddle it a bit and hope to winter in over–I’m hoping it is a tender perennial. Then, I will put it in a hanging basket and coax a bunch more of these striking blooms from it next summer.
In the past, I’ve often ordered the inexpensive perennial mixes from mail order catalogs–fifteen perennials for $9.99 or something like that. The value isn’t always there. When the plants arrive, they can be tiny and needy, and barely better than starting plants from seed. One year, I got a mix that included three Phlox paniculata plants. They didn’t look like much, but I stuck them out in the driveway bed and watered them now and then. It took a couple of years before they bloomed. In another year, they got pretty showy. The standout of the three is “Laura.” She has full lavender flowers with white eyes and makes a grand show.
Since I haven’t identified the other two clones planted in the same place, I’ll include their photos here with Laura. I didn’t imagine I would end up with a clashing color combo, thinking most of the hybrid phloxes would complement each other. Boy, was I wrong. The most red of the three is just red enough to clash pretty badly with the other two. The most robust one you see in the photos is also the most fragrant, sweetly scenting the entire driveway and lawn .
This clone is very fragrant.
Brash and clashy clone.
My 2020 plans for these plants are to water them during hot spells and enjoy their bright (and clashy) colors and sweet scents.
