In the same family as blue-eyed grass, a native wildflower that I see often up near our cabin, this plant came to me in a pack of mixed bulbous plant seeds. Germinating and growing quickly, I wasn’t sure what this plant was. Then, it got a few flowers that first year and I was clued in. And my brother recognized it from perennials growing in a public food garden he helps manage in West Seattle.

This plant has really strong, sword-like leaves and spikes of light yellow flowers that last for a month or so. Mine never filled out the way I’ve seen they can and has since either died back or gone dormant for an extra year.

I’m hoping this plant is still out in the garden in front of the greenhouse. My future plans will be to feed it and to get seeds from it to start some more plants. They are pretty fun and different.

Sister Cate passed me this plant at least twenty years ago. It is one of those plants that volunteers at its own discretion, not plentifully every year. Also, it seems like the seeds lie in wait for a few years and then resurface in the border, or in a crack in the driveway–you just never know.

Unfortunately, malvas get rust here in Seattle in the worst way. If these plants get a strong start in their first year, they can put on a magical (or mystical) show.

I don’t have any plans for Mystic Merlin because there aren’t any in the garden this year that I know of; but they will magically rise again.

When I was planning the memory garden, I knew that I’d need low-growing cushions for the south side of the bed. I tried many different kinds of seeds. Unfortunately, only one of the Arabis plants made it to adulthood. Fortunately, though, it is a really lovely plant.

This plant blooms in March/April and smothers itself in pristine white flowers. It doesn’t get above an inch-and-a-half tall, so it is perfect at the front of the border.

My future plans for this plant are to propagate it from spring cuttings and spread a few more along the south edge of the memory garden.

I ordered “potatoes” to start potato vines about seven years ago from eBay. The first year, they hardly grew and the resulting vines were really attractive and tame. However, it is easy to see the marauding nature of these vines and their ease of self propagation, to I didn’t plant any in the garden. They found homes in pots on the patio with taller plants they can climb on.

They’ve grown larger and even had bulbs in the leaf axils in the subsequent years. The leaves are wonderful–the vein pattern and texture are fantastic.

The leaves in the photo belong to D. bulbifera, but the flowers belong to Sinningia tubiflora.

My future plans for these plants are to feed them a little better with Jobe’s organic plant spikes and try to get more robust growth on them.

My wish to have Anemone species that thrive in my yard led me to start the native Anemone multifida from seed this year. I ended up with two small plants from the seeds that I started in spring 2020. They are attractive seedlings that I planted out in the native garden in the autumn.

My future plans for these plants are to baby them a bit in the first year to see if I can get them established and ready to bloom in 2022. I might start more from seed in 2021, too, because they germinated pretty easily.

I ordered a bag of A. blanda bulbs in one of the white forms for the Douglas fir bed about five years ago. For about three years, they grew and bloomed beautifully every March. They appear to have died out since then.

The Anemone family of plants has so many attractive members. I’m trying to find just the right ones that will survive in our garden. The leaves are interesting shapes, often, and the flowers have a delicate grace and some suble coloring that seems especially appropriate for early spring.

I don’t have any plans for these plants currently since they appear to have died off. I will keep trying new family members to see if I can get some to thrive and really put on a show.

I grew up calling this plant kinnickkinnick, which is one common name. It urns out kinnick kinnick is also a smoking blend used by indigenous people. I prefer the native groundcover plant. For the native garden I added one of these plants. I wasn’t sure how it would fare in a very exposed site, but it did well. In fact, kinnickkinnick seems to do well in a lot of places and it does get planted possibly more than any other native plant in commercial and public spaces.

The plant is an evergreen shrublet, with bell-shaped pinkish-white flowers and orange-red berries where conditions are right. This plant grows wild in the Tonasket area around our cabin. I rarely see berries there, though, despite prolific blooming. I suspect the berries get eaten before I can glimpse them.

I don’t have any photos of my new plant, but the above shows how well these shrubs can cover the ground near our cabin. My future plans for the plant are to makes sure it has room to spread and propagate it when possible to spread around the garden and share.

One of my native plant purchases in April 2020, I failed to find a good place for this vine in the garden in 2020. It languished in a pot where water and attention were sporadic, at best. Yet it survived.

I’ve seen photos of this vine climbing tree trunks and blooming boldly with orange tubular flowers. Hummingbirds are drawn to them, of course, and the rufous hummingbird is known to pollinate the flowers.

My future plan for this plant, and they likely will happen soon, is to carve the ivy away from the Douglas fir tree and plant this vine next to it, tie it to the trunk, and train it to grow there if it can survive in that dry, mostly shady space.

Another seedling started for bonsai, I just have one of these little guys left, but it is already an attractive tree. I think it may be a Monterey cypress, but I don’t know for sure–the parent plant was not labeled.

This tree has blue-green needles and reddish bark, which make for a handsome combination.

Future plans for this tree are to wire it and prune, trim, and pinch it into an even stronger tree shape. I’ll also pot it on into a more substantial pot, which might keep it from tumbling over all the time, which it seems to do now whenever the wind blows.

Here is a favorite arboretum tree that never fails to grab the attention of my siblings and me on our autumn visits. Aptly called the blue sausage tree, you can really see the seed pods to advantage when the leaves turn yellow in the fall.

I have one seedling left after starting these about five years ago. I think sister Cate has one, as well.

My little tree is probably very pot bound, so future plans will be to pot it on into a clay/ornamental pot and start trimming and pinching it to get more than just a stick shape.