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.

Oyster Leaf.  The leaves are edible and taste - and feel - exactly like raw oysters.  If raw oysters are your thing, this is an OMG veg alternative.  The now closed El Bulli in Catalonia, regarded as one of the greatest restaurants ever, ran with Oyster Leaf innovative ways.  Loved to have tried the leaves striped in golden caviar and splashed with Grey Goose.

This is one of those plants worth the greenhouse space if you can't grow it outside which we can't.  An evergreen vine from Chile where it is the national flower. Big waxy pendant flowers of typically rose red. These normally flower in late summer and fall. and we were entranced by beautiful specimens in bloom when we visited the west of Scotland in the fall of 2013.

Superb little performer from China that is like some sort of impish Thalictrum with short stems to 6" and open umbels of blue and white flowers.  The main show is in late spring but the flowers keep coming all summer.  Just a sweet bit of conversational perfection along the edge of a path.

Did we mean to infer that this is a PINK Gillenia????  Why yes, we did.  And it is.  Pink, definitely pink.  An exciting offering of a dandy variant on a choice eastern native.  Pink Bowman's Root will get 24"-30" tall with multiple stems sporting an airy array of pink flowers.  Great fall color as well.

These are seed-grown from the impressive yellow hybrid Meadow Rue, Tukker Princess. These will gain some height reaching 6'-8' in flower with a nice display of bee-lovin' scented yellow flowers. These will vary somewhat but all squarely in the very nice range.  For all  who've been to the nursery trying to pick up this from the tables only to find it was poking through from the ground beneath, this is what you wanted.

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.

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 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.

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.

Moon Carrot.  Freakishly good plant with gray-blue leaves with an impressive mid to late summer branched inflorescence sporting compound umbels touched in pink then maturing white.  Plant nerdishness meets high-end design with this one.  This is biennial but reseeds so do not fear.  Good drainage.

Devil's Elder. This is a hardy large evergreen shrub to 15'-20' tree from Chile and Argentina where it grows in shaded situations along streams or bogs. It does well in our shade garden without being a tippler where it has handled nicely brief dips to 10F. The flowers are loose panicles of interesting wee green things which give way to purplish brown fruit.

Dainty yet durable species collected by Sue on Mt Saramati which straddles the border of Myanmar and Nagaland.  The only lily capsule found on the trip and it proved to be a distinct variant likely to merit subspecific status. Small white flowers.  Sue is now a footnote in botanical history.

As perennials go, this Mexican Pea Tribe member is staggeringly impressive.  From a woody base, there appears in spring stout stems reaching 8 feet..  On a mature plant, these stems are numerous and it becomes a dominant seasonal shrub. Pinnate leaves with 4 leaflets, large discoidal purple- veined stipules and big yellow flowers in fall.

A collection by our friend Steve Hootman, the Indiana Jones of plant hunting, of this quite beautiful Asian species from a fairly cold area so this should have good hardiness. Attractive foliage on 10"-15" stems with showy white parasols of flowers in mid spring which brings light to the dark of the shade garden. Gently spreading to just the right extent and rare in cultivation.

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.

A jolly plant indeed introduced by Heronswood from Sichuan.  This has evergreen foliage springing from new growth that looks to be a bamboo until it leafs out.  Small creamy white flowers in early summer and blue-black fruit held well into winter.  Cut back old stems in spring.  Feed me.  Water me.

Panache oozes from the phylloclades of this haute shade shrub.  Before you get nervous, phylloclades are leaf-like organs of modified stem tissue as this nonpareil evergreen is so far beyond the cutting edge that true leaves are just so yesterday.  Small green flowers to delight a microscopist, showy red berries in fall.

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.

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.

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.

This is a collection from Lao Cai, Above Silver Waterfall, Vietnam 2150 meters just in case you are in the neighborhood and want to check out the original plant.  This is a reasonably narrow shrub which flowers very young with small pale pom-poms of clustered tiny flowers which are followed by black fruit.

A fine evergreen Maidenhair Fern from a naturally occurring hybrid between Adiantum aleuticum and A. jordanii.  These are a different clone than the "original clone" and no less desireable with the same fine and wholesome attributes.  Maidenhairs have always been one of the quintessential ferns in our estimation and this is a choice one.

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.

Originally from Maurice Foster who is one of the UK's great plantsmen who would not gladly brook an inferior form.   This can hit 10' in height with a narrow aspect and generally deciduous willowish or bamboo-like leaves.  Small purplish flowers and outrageous jester's cap fruit with dangling orange arils.

Our collection of this Asian herbaceous perennial vining member of the Bellflower or Campanula family, this is very distinctive in having narrow and elegant tubular green flowers on a vine to 8'.  This will die down each fall but pop back in the spring.  This prefers bright shade to part shade and we found this growing in shrubbery in open forest.

A Far Reaches Botanical Conservancy Offering.  Unidentified species of a seriously good Asian Pittosporum.  This was an attention-grabber being essentially a small 15' tree with large - for a Pittosporum - evergreen leaves.  What really stopped us was the large green seed capsules like small figs.  These split open when mature to reveal showy orange seeds.  Young seed-grown plants.