We love seeing this False Hellebore when we are hiking up to Marmot Pass or Mt Townsend in the Olympics.  Always growing in dappled light or partly sunny spts where there is ample moisture, the big wide pleated leaves are perfect with the drooping plume-like green flowers.  Deer proof.

A no-fuss restrained yet refined evergreen Cardamine which is nearly faultless.  We haven't found a fault yet but most overachievers are hiding something deep under that charm and industry.  Rest assured, this will never go postal in your garden.  Dark green dense leaves set off  flowers of of purest white in early summer.

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.

Much like the famed chicken, this hybrid from Ed Bowen is destined to become a staple.  But in our gardens rather than our tables.  Ed crossed the giant of the genus, Eucomis autumnalis ssp. pole-evansii with E. 'Sparkling Burgundy' and got the pineapple lily of our dreams with big rich foliage and flowers.

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!

Solomon's Seal.  Mighty fine selection and surely one of the very best variegated perennials for shade.  Good clean white variegation that illuminates where it is planted.  Stunning enough to stand alone with a simple groundcover at its feet or schmoozes easily  with other garden glitteratti.

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.

If you have the spot for this plant then there is no reason to not to grow this unless you simply don't do red because this is a smoldering fountain of saturated pigmentation celebrating the red spectrum.  Red foliage and bright red flowers on 3'-4' stems in late summer.  Moist and rich.

Staggeringly impressive recent introduction of this Solomon Seal species from - wait for it -  Vietnam.  This is similar to our favorite Polygonatum huanum (formerly as kingianum) but is just more of everything that is good.  Large red flowers snug the whorled leaves on stems which this year in the garden reached 15' tall and which remain green for us until temps drop below 20F.

This rugged South African is sun, wind and drought tolerant and absolutely hardy in the PNW.  One of the most admired plants in our border for its profuse display of large yellow to orange daisies on low stems.  Good drainage.

A very good form of the species collected by Dan Hinkley in China.  All parts - leaves, scape or flower stem, flowers - larger than typically found in the species.  Fresh grass green leaves are marked in silver and the flower stems bears a snowstorm of simple white flowers This will thrive in the moist shade garden but prefers light to bright shade.

Lily of the Valley.  A good selection of this stalwart species with a yellow margin to the leaves and said leaves are larger than average as well.  Typical scented white flowers.  There are numerous spellings of the cultivar name but since this is an American introduction, we can only assume this is correct.  Sad.

Beautiful clumping species that may well be the queen of the genus.  Or are we granting royalty because it is new on the scene?  Maybe, but it is awfully good. This makes a stout small clump of evergreen fern-like leaves from which emerge in spring the peculiarly Coptis greenish-yellow flowers.  From China.

A purported G. papilio hybrid, our mama plant when in bloom with its 5 foot stems of red-mauve flowers sporting dark eye patches, frequently caused plant geeks to start speaking in tongues and offer creative enticements in exchange for a wee bit.  We have had to say "No." until now.

Kind of a rocking plant in that it really requires nothing from you.  We have it in a drier spot in our shade garden and it just trucks along looking good and putting on nice white flowers for months on end.  Horrible winter weather comes and it doesn't care - just stays evergreen.  We've gotten rather attached to it and you will as well.  One of Beth Chatto's 100 favorites.

Long my favorite Bergenia with large upright broad paddles of leaves which turn the  best maroon in the winter of any in the genus.  Oh sure, the dark pink flowers are good in spring but this plant is one of the few reasons I look forward to winter.  Galanthus for contrast - oh my.

Pretty awesome new hybrid that came up at Suncrest Nurseries in CA thanks to some inspired work by the bees.  This outshines its parents with gray-blue leaves and branched erect stems to 3' holding lots of lavender-blue flowers for many weeks.  This can take drier conditions and the vermin deer don't like it.

This is thought to be an intergeneric hybrid between 2 of New Zealand's shrubby daisies.  This gives a fabulous textural addition to the Mediterranean garden like some happy marriage of heather and rosemary.  Small white flowers cluster at the tops of the stems.  Good drainage, tolerant of some dry.

A surprisingly hardy tuberous little wildflower from the mountains of the Southwest.  This has BLUE flowers of some enviable intensity.  The flower buds are held clasped in a pouch like a heart folded in half and one flower emerges each day.  Sun, dry to moist and decent drainage.

Awesome little plant with fresh winter foliage which gives way to 8"-12" tall dense stems with an improbable number of pure white double flowers. Goes summer dormant so don't panic although we still do. Cool plant native to the UK and Europe and favoring vernally wet areas.

A mat-forming, creeping bit of amusement from New Zealand where it grows from Auckland south.  This is related to the monster Gunnera of cast concrete leaf fame but is just a tad more manageable.  Great at pond's edge in the shaded woodland and small pipecleaners of reddish flowers are a pleasant surprise.

Lovely, lovely species with classic Turk's cap shaped flowers of gentle pink with a lavender nuance further enhanced by a sprinkle of darker beauty spots on the downturned face which exhales a light fragrance that takes but the slightest stirring of the air to swirl about in fleeting notes taking this to yet a higher plane of pleasure.  Seed grown

We got this from Maggie at Western Hills some years ago as an Alstroemeria x Bomarea hybrid called 'Fred Meyer'.   Thanks to Martin Grantham at UC Davis, we finally have the correct name.   This is a rare and surprisingly hardy species from Brazil which does great outside for us.  Pink corolla tube with green petals and yellow throat.  Not aggressive.

A Steve Hootman collection from China of this quite unique creeping Honeysuckle.  This is a Kinnikinnik or Arctostaphylos uva-ursi alternative making a mat of small rounded green leaves turning rich purple/red/bronze tones in winter.  Small light yellow Honeysuckle flowers are sprinkled throughout.  Very cool.

This is likely a hybrid and we guessed with longifolia but who knows?  Hybridity just means extra vigor and a better garden plant with fabulous big silver-crusted long leaves in showy rosettes supporting tall sprays of white flowers. Bright shade to morning sun is ideal. Easy.

Awesome rare lily known only from NE India where Frank Kingdon-Ward first collected it in either Manipur or Nagaland and named it after his wife whose maiden name was Macklin.  Pale pink flowers in late spring and early summer are a lovely thing indeed on this smaller collector's lily.  Frank's wife must have been an exquisite creature.

Foetid Adders Tongue.  How can you not love a plant with a name like this?  Trillium relative native to the coastal Redwoods of California, this ranks as one of our most favorite plants.  Sure the intricate early spring flowers smell of gym locker wet dog but how cool!  And what foliage!

Got lots of sun and sandy or well-drained soil with average to low fertility in a dryish garden beset by rabbits and deer but still want lots of flowers for the bees and other pollinators? Look no further as this will nicely fill the bill. Mature plant has hundreds of pink papery bracted flowers in midsummer on drooping stems. Best displayed in a raised bed.

A less commonly encountered species which calls the Rhodopi and Pirin Mts of Bulgaria home.  This lavender-blue flowers finely fringed in very narrow petals on a flower that is more widely open than related species.  Small rounded evergreen leaves are a pleasure all year but it’s the flowers that makes your toes tingle in spring.

This has grown into one of our favorite small deciduous shrubs which we grow near our bog garden.  Collected in China on the Sino-British Expedition to Cangshan in 1981 which was one of the first western botanic expeditions to China in modern times.  Copious rosy-pink flowers on a 4'-6' tall shrub.  Zone 6 at least.