Frosted Jade Ajuga.  Hard to believe that this is an Ajuga but it is true.  This choice selection has fantastic foliage and very good dark cobalt flowers.  Not a spreader - this makes a clump with 16" tall stems.  Challenges all of your comfy notions about Ajuga but in a good way.  Great in our shade garden.

Originally introduced by Cistus Nursery from a seed collection at 8000' in La Siberica, Mexico, this very desirable plant has become hard to find of late but our two plants finally flowered with impressive spikes that was one male and one predominately female so we had seed! These have been undamaged in brief nighttime drops to 10F and have formed new crowns after flowering so the show will continue. It is mandatory to have a series of parties when these bloom, btw.

Rare plant found only in limited areas in central Honshu, Japan where it likes the forest fringes in the subalpine areas and is known as hiiragi-sou or holly tree-leafed weed.  Hiiragi-sou sounds better than the translation.  This selection has dark blue flowers and is a deciduous clumper to 16" tall - very nice!

Maidenhair Spleenwort.  I love common names.  I must dig out our 15th century Herbal and read up on how to properly decoct this sweet little fern for afflicting humors of the spleen.  Or I can just grow it in a gritty well-drained shaded rock garden and enjoy its evergreen delicacy.

A most impressive fern and one we've been privileged to see in its native haunts in China.  This makes magnificent large long fronds, coppery when young and when mature, terminating in a single fuzzy small ball or gemma, which will become a new fern.

Himalayan Bush Mint.  Surprisingly hardy species - the gestalt at first glance is gotta be tender - that will be valuable late summer-fall color.  Soft felty leaves on a plant that can hit ten feet tall, you grow this not for the aromatic and pettable foliage but for the tubular orange-red flowers in September-October mainly.  Cut to the ground by hard frost but will regrow and would totally groove on a wall in its colder zones.  Pronounced ko-hoo-nia.

Japanese Tassel Fern.  One of the really excellent evergreen ferns providing a delicately classic lacy fern texture in a well-mannered clumping habit.  New growth is softly fuzzy.  This is a no fuss no muss woodlander which asks for little except a good drink now and then.

We were completely blown away by the plant we saw in full fruit in the exceptional garden at Dancing Oaks and sad to say, we did doth covet our neighbors plant with lust in our hearts.  Leonard and Fred thought it prudent to sell us one.  To 6'-8' with soft yellow flowers and dripping with clusters of salmon fruit.

Whipple's Penstemon.  Broadly distributed on both sides of the Rockies down the US, this should be more widely available.  Most commonly with clustered down-turned trumpets of a rich burgundy to purple, different population can also be white or lavender.  Very pleasing in all of its forms, this is a good garden plant taking more moisture than a lot of the rock garden Penstemons.

A good dark violet- pink version of this widespread Allium from our collection in southern Sichuan.  A very easy plant in the garden getting up to 20" tall and having the added bonus of being edible which might become increasingly critical the longer Trump is in office.

This is the form most often available here in the Northwest and which may well be a hybrid with Vancouveria planipetala.  The flowers are much paler and a smidge smaller than typical Vancouveria chrysantha from our observations.  Regardless, a first rate evergreen ground cover which is drought tolerant.

So notoriously promiscuous as to make a rabbit blush, these evergreen bulbous Iris family members are all about the summer of love. Embracing any bee that taps on its window bringing pollen from any nearby floozy flower, this exhibits a Bacchanalian moral turpitude that is either damned or extolled.  These are young seed-grown plants from one of our darkest Dierama so at worst, this will still be pretty good.

A favorite of ours from South Africa.  We have this growing in front of our greenhouse and the first winter I mulched it and covered with a a tarp.  No damage. 2nd winter just tarped it - no damage.  Last winter I didn't protect at all and no damage at 17F.  Yellow daisy flowers - good drainage.

A perennial (usually anyway) thistle relative from South Africa which makes a multicrowned clump of softly spiny leaves which by themselves merit nothing more than a good hosing of Roundup but the large purplish flowers are the swan emerging from the ugly duckling.

Milk Chocolate Foxglove.  This is a fine perennial species from Spain and Portugal that serves double duty as a sculptural piece of garden art.  The deep green leaves are a perfect complement to the short 30" spires of small but densely packed, tubular orange-brown flowers that crowd the stems.  A group of these is a fairly arresting sight.  Low maintenance and deer resistant.

A very nice South African Buddleja whose beauty lies in its evergreen heavily textured foliage.  The narrow leaves are silver clad when young maturing to a dull green but very pale benath and all held on fuzzy white stems.  Small white flowers but at least they are scented.  Hardy.

Excellent dwarf grass forming dense tussocks with dark seedheads bobbing on wiry stems.  Choice little plant for the rock garden or trough and suitable for the open garden in that special little niche.

Pretty awesome evergreen fern because not only is it cool but it increases fast enough to make a statement in the garden before you are in your dotage and have forgotten why you bought this yet not in that rampaging acreage-eating Borg-assimilating manner that is sometimes described as "a good nursery plant".

Our collection of this Chinese mayapple from Yunnan China.  Pink flowers in spring followed by large red roma tomato fruit in Fall.  Rich moist soil.  Great foliage.

A plant that has proved its worth over the years performing beautifully at the Denver Botanic Garden handling not only summer heat but winter cold. A hybrid which gets to just 18" tall or a tad more with lots of rich purple flowers for nearly 2 months in early summer. Thanks to Ian of Desert Northwest for turning us on to this goodie.

Bugbane.  A dusky, dark-leafed plant that appeared as a seedling in our shade garden a few years ago.  We are windy here and which seed from which black-leafed, named form blew in from our sales tables, we cannot say.  We let it be where it landed until it got too large and now it is divisions in pots.  To 4' with late season wands of whitish fragrant flowers.

A serious bit of yellow on this rock garden gem.  The dome of small silver leaves is completely obscured by the mass of yellow flowers in May and June here.  We let ours go to seed so we can enjoy more seedlings.  This is visually nearly identical to three other distantly related species in the Mediterranean and may reflect parallel evolution from similar habitats.

Leave it to Sean Hogan to make selections of a species that hardly anyone grows or knows.  Thanks to him, we grow it and are on a steep learning curve.  This has silvery leaves nicely lobed and revels in heat and will take dry conditions perfectly which only increases its hardiness.  Thriving in Portland.  This can produce small edible fruit.  Deciduous by the way.

Fun and very hardy selection that has willowy and twisting branchlets sporting 2" light yellow flower brushes on the branch tips all pointing willy-nilly for wild Medusal effect with a long bloom period on older plants.  Happy in nearly any soil and happiest with regular water.  Not deer fodder.

Doll's Eyes Baneberry.  Striking woodland plant in fruit - the white puffs of flowers in late spring are ok but the fruit is serious business.  An elongated fruiting spike holds with red stems, round white berries each with a small black pupil.  The common name is immediately obvious and is either clever or creepy depending on how many "Chucky" movies you have watched.  We think it is clever.  All parts poisonous which means deer proof.

Our collection from a previously unbotanized remnant old-growrth forest in China.  It was like walking in a mountain valley in Appalachia with massive Beech, Chestnuts, Hornbeams, Magnolias and Rhododendrons all hundreds of years old.  Just writing this - it is like we're there.  Good evergreen fern - guessing on species.

Bog Rosemary.  A lower growing form with bronzy-green leaves but with rose-pink flowers which is a pleasant surprise.  Got an acidic moist spot with a lot of organic matter in soil?  If you do, here you go.  Basically thrives in blueberry culture.  This should be deer proof as it has some nice toxins that will discourage them.

Unflowered plants from our seed collection, although attributes and geography suggest a likelihood of this being the species edulis due to widespread cultivation from pre-Columbian times thanks to the edible tubers.  If this is edulis, expect 24 or more pink-tubed flowers with green-yellow throats in a fireworks umbel.  Showy orange seeds in fall.

This is a little charmer from a Diana Reeck collection in Yunnan which is quite short to just a few 6" tall but with very lovely pinkish and white flowers.  When we see this bloom it takes us back to those same woods where saw this same species a year after Diana collected its seed in 1996,  This is a sturdy little fellow increasing each year by offsets and reseeding a bit.

We've sold this before as the pink form of baileyi but now have the correct name.  These are lovely 4-petaled flowers of a distinctive mauve pink and has proved to be a good perennial form.  While it is in the Poppy family, it hates the sun and dry.  Give this a moist well-drained rich soil in bright shade to morning sun.