Fun newish selection of the recently moved to Bistort from Persicaria with softly golden foliage which is a great backdrop for the 24"-36" flower stems bearing spikes of flowers the same color as Dorothy's ruby slippers. Easy, hardy, bright shade and gangbusters in rich moist soil.

A Great Plant Pick, and rightly so because this performs in the garden.  Thin spikes of soft pink flowers are held nicely upright, more so than many other cultivars and pair wonderfully with the bold green foliage to create a ethereal pinkish floral haze above the bulwark of green.  Not weedy or aggressive, this is good.

All the rage in Europe is this Mother of all Fleece Flowers and for darn good reason.  This BEHAVES ITSELF!  it doesn't run or seed, just clumps and BLOOMS ALL SUMMER UNTIL FROST!  Get over the "I don't do Persicaria's" thing - this rocks.  It is a geyser of bloom fer gawd's sake.

Rock Knotweed.  A choice mounding groundcover we got at one of the best alpine plant nurseries on the planet, Aberconwy Nursery in Wales.  Dense trailing and mounding red stems lavishly adorned with Aug-Sept spires of pink flowers and glossily petite deciduous leaves.  Lovely spiller in containers.

Fern fans we are, fern experts we are not, but we continue to chip away at the imposing taxonomic massif of Pteridphyta in hopes of becoming somewhat conversational in Fern. Currently, we can ask the equivalent of where the restroom is and order beer when talking Asian ferns. This is a creeping fern with long, thin rhizomes ideally suited for weaving through shallow moss on shaded rock faces with small orbicular-ovate evergreen leaves.

A Far Reaches Botanical Conservancy Offering.  This is an interesting fern of which we have just a few nice divisions.  This grows as an epiphyte on tree trunks which is typical for the genus and was found at the high point in the mountain range so should have some hardiness. The distinctive large rounded paired sori on the backs of the leaves also fit the genus.

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.

One of the finest of the species Peonies, this Mediterranean goody is among the first to bloom in spring. Fabulous new growth and very showy single pink flowers. With good, well-drained soil, this will be more heat tolerant than the other species.

Just call her Molly the Witch.  This fabled Peony is a choice species from the Caucasus region with impossible to improve upon single yellow goblets for flowers.  The red new growth in spring evokes some avant garde asparagus.  Showy blue-black seeds mingle with red infertile ovules.

A woody species peony we first saw in Yunnan in 1997 growing in the open woodland surrounding the alluvial plain of the Ganghoba valley with Dipelta, Rodgersia and Arisaema.  This will get 4'-6' tall with nicely dissected foliage and the small but intense flowers on these young, seed-grown plants will likely be red although orange is possible as we have both and bees will be bees.

Unflowered seed-grown plants of this short woody species which we presume will come true but cannot discount reverting to the norm of red or yellow.  This came to us many years ago from the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle.  Multiple woody stems to 4'-7' tall with well-dissected leaves and small ORANGE flowers.

Choice woodland species from Japan where the small bowl-shaped white flowers are much admired and combines harmoniously with the simple rounded leaflets.  An easy herbaceous species and one of the few Peonies that thrives in the shade.  Looks great with Ferns, Hellebores and Hostas.

Steve Hootman, curator of the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden, often pats himself on the back for collecting this exceptional species in China and each spring as our plants flower, we murmur attaboys and give him virtual high fives.  Loves some shade, great foliage and spring pink flowers.

A very elegant species combining refinement of foliage and flower.  Rounded leaflets softly tinted in flesh tones back the single pink goblet shaped flowers.  Exquisite is a word not used lightly here.  A denizen of the Japanese woodlands, this performs beautifully in full shade.

This Chinese woodland Peony is one of the few species blooming and thriving in full shade although part sun suits it as well.  Nicely dissected ferny foliage and slightly nodding single pink flowers 2-3 per stem makes this distinctively beautiful.  Decent drainage.  Easy.

A very charming lithophyte from our collection in China where it clad the upper portion of an appliance-sized boulder in the shade of an open broadleaf evergreen forest.  This evergreen to semi-evergreen fern has leaflets so soft they rival the downy belly of a baby chinchilla - pure conjecture but accurate.

This variegated Japanese selection used to be in the genus Cacalia.   Broad foliage irregularly and finely streaked and spattered in cream like a monochromatic misting by Jackson Pollock on a green canvas.  This will get to up to 30" with upright stems clad in this conversational foliage.  Forgettable flowers.  We've grown this in light shade to good effect and hardy to zone 4.

One of the stars in our shade garden is this Chinese Trillium relative.  These are seedlings from our garden plants which are marvels of vegetative increase.  The 3 bulbs we planted have increased to over 50 stems with elegant flowers and showy orange fruit.  Hope the kids learned something.

A Hinkley collection of this very collectible Trillium relative from China.  The 7-12 narrow leaves are arranged like spokes on a wheel and have short deep purple petioles.  The flowers are the typical Paris expression of atypical nonconformity with lots of green and spidery filaments.  We have not keyed this yet to verify the name but it is quite rhizomatous and is not of the widespread polyphylla clan.  Divisions.

A selection of this Japanese native from our friends at the wonderful Free Spirit nursery just across the border from us in British Columbia.  The whole place is saturated with taste and sensibility which is tempered by whimsy.  This has a salmon tinge to the new growth of incised maple-like leaves to 8"-10" tall.  Yellow flowers in May-June on this mat-former.

This is an excellent rock or crevice garden Penstemon we picked up at Aberconwy Nursery in Wales.  Their selection for lavender flowers of Penstemon rupicola, we suspect it is a hybrid as the species normally has blue-ish foliage and pink flowers.  Great introduction regardless and it is thriving in our crevice garden.

Sweet hybrid between two of the best Washington natives, Penstemon rupicola and P. barrettiae.  This is growing in our rock garden where it excels in poor, well-drained, sandy soil in full sun with minimal water.  Nice evergreen leaves and big sugar pink flowers in summer.  Ours came from the Columbia-Willamette Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society.

A time-tested durable perennial for the garden which boasts deep purple flowers thatt continue into fall if dead-headed.  If you can't be bothered to dead-head, then you will just have to content yourself with 2 months of outrageous color in early summer on a plant which will get to 3' by 3'.

A native of dry, rocky slopes in the northern Rockies. Glossy evergreen leaves are complemented by spikes of light blue to violet flowers in mid-summer. Leaves will sometimes take on a nice purple coloration in winter. Appreciates a lean well-drained soil in a sunny location so rock gardens or dry gravel gardens are great.

Let's talk drought tolerance. This is one step up from cactus. We always marvel at this growing out of cracks in sheer basalt cliffs on the dry Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge and looking oh so good despite the most rigorous of conditions. Great for the rock garden. Good drainage.  Purple-pink flowers on this evergreen subshrub.

A wild collection from 4450' in Eddy County New Mexico. With stems to 3', the tubular red flowers rank one side of the stem looking very refined. An unspoken secret of the very refined is their dense scruff of golden, decidedly pubic hairs just inside the throat. These catch and transfer pollen while keeping the flower's naughty bits hot, steamy and ready.

A variety of P. fruticosus found only in the Blue Mountains in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. This variety hugs the ground, forming mats up to 3ft wide covered in pale pink to lavender flowers in mid-summer. The toothed leaves separates this from other varieties of fruticosus. Full sun and ideal in well-drained lean rock gardens.

A Plant Select release out of Colorado, this is a vigorous and floriferous selection of the species getting 12"-18" tall and wider. This has myriad tubular, orange flowers that are hummingbird crack which flower for many weeks in summer to early fall. Low water needs, don't kill it with the kindness of rich compost. Another positive is that deer - ours anyway - don't like Penstemon.

This occurs east of the Cascades and in CA and NV at high elevations and in Sue's opinion is the best form of Penstemon procerus.  Small tight ground-hugging mats of fleshy succulent green leaves are backing for the short dark blue flowers.  Consummate rock garden plant.

Seed-grown from a collection in the Indian Heaven area of Gifford Pinchot National Forest in the southern Cascade Mts of Washington.  Surely one of our favorite Penstemon, this has glaucous, rounded leaves on creeping mats with pink flowers that just lovely.  This requires a rock garden, trough or crevice garden as it needs a lean and gritty, mineral soil with excellent drainage.