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.

Despite its propensity to spread, I’ve always loved borage as a bee plant and a simple herb that adds a carefree spot of color for most of the year. I’ve been growing borage around this garden for over twenty years, mostly around the raised vegetable beds to attract pollinators. One year I grew the white-flowered variety just to have something different. Strangely, most of the seedlings that have come up in the last year are white.

I don’t have any plans for these plants in 2020 other than to enjoy them wherever they volunteer in the garden, and to enjoy the pollinators they attract.

My earliest memories of this plant are from a rock garden at the home my parents had in Burien in my earliest childhood. I think this used to be a much more popular perennial, but the other Heuchera plants with brilliantly colored foliage have surpassed this bright bloomer in popularity.

I’m not sure if it is nostalgia or the color and presentation of the flowers, but I still really like this plant. I grew some from seed in 2018 for the memory garden–many of them germinated and grew, but I didn’t transition them well to the garden and only ended up with three of them. I’ve seen photos of big patches of these in bloom and that makes an outstanding spectacle. I probably won’t ever have that many of them, but I’m glad I have a few.

My 2020 plans for these plants are to keep them fed and watered and enjoy their very red flowers.

I grew this carefree plant from seed over fifteen years ago. The original plant is planted along the driveway and I’ve taken cuttings and have another plant in the flower bed in front of the greenhouse. The typical Jacob’s ladder foliage is topped by apricot-cream flowers in May. The plant is quite floriferous for about three weeks, and then it sits quietly until the next year.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to get a few more cuttings from it and plant them around the garden or give them away.

Brother Tim, sister Cate, and I came across this interesting plant at the Washington Park Arboretum. Here is a photo of the “mother” plant.

Those berries have seeds that grow pretty easily. I’ve had several batches of seedlings. None of the ones that I transplanted into the garden have survived, but the couple that I still have in pots are doing well.

For 2020, I will pot these into bigger pots and move them to the patio. My goal is for them to become patio plants.

Columbines have always found a home in my garden. They are easy to start from seed and don’t ask for a lot once they get situated. I probably have thirty columbine plants in the garden right now, mostly in the memory garden, but also in the driveway bed and the Douglas fir bed.

My challenge with columbines has been that I grow mixes or choose varieties that end up not being my favorites. Breeders have focused more on flower power and unusual forms and less on gracefulness and the natural beauty of the plants.

I’ve notice what looks like a mosaic virus on the existing columbines in the memory garden. I plan to root those out after they bloom and destroy them. Over time, I hope to replace all the hybrids with native columbine, Aquilegia formosa. I’ve got a bunch of seeds planted already in pots and I’m hoping to have transplants ready to go out this autumn.

Brother Tim passed me the first Lewisia, which is also the one that is doing the best. And my second Lewisia was purchased from a local nursery. I grew them both in the greenhouse like houseplants for several years, but they only did moderately well with that treatment. Since they are hardy here, I decided that they might like the dry, sunny edge of the memory garden. So, out they went in the fall of 2018 and they are doing alright out there.

Because their new home is directly under the giant Douglas fir tree, they don’t get much rainfall. Even in the very wettest weather, almost no water gets through that massive fir canopy. This should keep the Lewisias from rotting in the winter.

The second Lewisia is yellow-orange. It is starting to bloom now, so I’ll add a few photos in the next few weeks.

My 2020 plans for these plants are to feed them a bit and keep an eye on them to see how they are doing. There are native Lewisias to Washington, but I don’t think any are actually native to Seattle–they are more mountain denizens. I’ve seen bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva) growing wild near our cabin in Tonasket.

Here are some native flowers that are relatively new additions to the memory garden, planted in the fall of 2018. They bloomed well for me in May of 2019 and are blooming again now, in May 2020. From grass-like foliage, they send graceful sprays of the bluest star flowers. I’ve only seen these growing wild once in my life, down in a vacant lot in Centralia with a lot of other native wildflowers that were unfamiliar to me. Below are pictures of those plants, with the larger photos from my own garden.

I’m still learning how to garden with these. I want the foliage and any seeds to ripen, so I don’t want to plant anything to smother them over the summer as I might with tulips or narcissus.

For 2020, my goal is to add a bunch more of these to the native plant garden that we just created. I also plan to feed the existing bulbs a few times to make sure they continue to grow and thrive.