Europe

We love white flowers in the shade garden. The juxtaposition against the dark earth and the interplay and mediation with other colors makes white an excellent choice. These have pure white flowers with a light chartreuse throat touched faintly in red and of course those perfectly mottled leaves.

A European Trillium relative that forms small colonies in time by creeping rhizomes. Four-parted leaves and greenish flowers that look like an artistic, sculptural rendition influenced by recreational doses of psilocybin. These later give way to a black knob of seeds which are attractive in their own right. Our patch in our shade garden has increased to about 4' across and once it hits 10', we will feel like we have enough.

Pink Willow Gentian. Thanks to Claire Cockroft for sharing these with us so we can pass them along to you. Choice and scarce pink form of one of the classic fall blooming gentians, this develops into a robust plant with many arching stems ranked with pink flowers. An easy wow.

Rarely offered little Wormwood which is troughable, which is a term we should trademark in order to capitalize on the 20 or so people who have both troughs and a penchant for dwarf Artemisia. We need a new business advisor or maybe we should listen to the current one. Few inches high and spreading. Yellowish flowers.

Classic name for what must be an English selection with amber tawny yellow flowers - in the US with our bright yellow squeeze bottle mustard, it would have to be an old forgotten bottle of mustard indeed. Easy doer we got from that consummate English plantsman David Mason and he didn't steer us wrong. Wide leaves backing stems with umbels of pub mustard flowers with a white eye.

Crested Hart's Tongue Fern. Crested ferns are always fun and this one does provide some amusement in the garden. Rather than the typical evergreen, entire sword-shaped leaves which taper to a point, these crested forms splay out at the end into a rounded and ruffled flourish which might mark this as a self-indulgent dandy were it not for its complete absence of ego. More than happy to play a necessary supporting role to those blooming Trilliums for example. Doesn't mind a bit of lime and will self-spore in mortared walls.

Rock Soapwort. This is a lovely and tough rock garden or crevice plant from the Pyrenees where it grows in exposed sheer rock faces. Dense cushions of close-packed rosettes with narrow short green leaves. Pink-purple flowers are held on short 2" stems in groups of one to three. One becomes a group when hanging with the Threes. Full sun, good drainage, zones 3-8.

Uncommon and choice dwarf Thyme we introduced to the US when we brought this little gem home from an alpine nursery in Scotland. A very fine plant of compact habit and the expected profusion of flowers which while not red, are a vividly intense neon fuchsia-infused magenta. Find that on a paint chip!

A selection of this outstanding European alpine species notable for having large flowers and being quite a good bloomer. Not all acaulis flower freely but 'Krebs' brings it with large upward-facing trumpets of impossible blue except they are right there in front of you so it must be possible but how can such a tight mat of small green adpressed leaves produce such a fantastical display of color intensity? The good thing is we don't have to know how and why about everything and sometimes it is quite enough to have your senses left reeling by a wee bit of green that does something so flamboyant that it would leave Sir Richard Branson shaking his head in rueful acknowledgment at having been thoroughly bested. We were so excited to finally get this clone that we told all of our friends we got 'Krebs' and it was a long time before we noticed no one was coming over or inviting us to dinner. Our friends aren't plant people for the most part so the misinterpretation was understandable and most have come back once we explained but we really miss Rich and Karen.

One of our most favored small trees is this princeling of a cornel. Late winter flowers of yellow filamentous buttons followed by perfectly clean white variegation in the leaves and all further accented when the flowers turn into edible reddish fruits in late summer. Extremely hardy species and these are on their own roots and not grafted.

Madeiran Blueberry. We have the late Art Dome to thank for sharing this Vaccinium native to Madeira with us. He grew this beautifully in his Seward park garden but it really does need a mild garden. Big flowers for a blueberry and lots of tasty fruit. We were all grazing last summer.

Variegated Willow. A yummy and scarce selection brought to the west from Vermont by the beloved Millet. This makes a densely twiggy, broad yet tall multi-trunked small tree or shrub. Fast and easy (not at all like Sue), this is unique in its creamy foliage variegation. A sweet thing (like Sue).

Wood Anemone. This is a good blue form with flowers darker than many of the blue selections and even though the individual flowers are a little smaller than typical, we don't care as this is such a lovely thing. Found in the Estonian woodlands by Mart Veerus and introduced we think by Janis Ruksans.

Dog Tooth Violet. The European representative of the genus which contains our native Avalanche Lily. This selection has great mottled foliage and lovely flowers of an even violet purple highlighted by a throat touched in maroon and yellow. Frans must have been a bit of a dandy.

Tough plant from Russia and Romania with blue two-lipped flowers from June into September. This will get 2' to 3' tall and likes good drainage in sandy, gravelly situations where it can get occasional water although it is pretty drought tolerant. Being a Salvia, the Port Townsend gardening soul-crushing deer won't eat it.........yet. Once our Uptown PT herd exceeds 100, all bets are off. Thanks to Panayoti Kelaidis for sharing seed.

A nice small flowered light pink form of this necessary Anemone species which followed us home from the UK a few years back. What is a necessary Anemone, you ask? One which is indispensable in your shade or woodland garden and whose absence would not only be noted but commented upon and repeated, a gardening gaffe going viral.

A dwarf Foxglove from Spain and North Africa and a Plant Select introduction for those hot and cold Rocky Moutain gardeners. Bewitching spires of dark Baltic amber flowers in early summer, this perennial will form nice clumps with multiple flower stems. Evergreen narrow leaves in less harsh winters, this is hardy to zone 4b. Not too wet, don't overfeed.

A strong-growing form favored among some of the remaining specialty nurseries in Oregon. Dense evergreen mats of tight foliage erupt in spring and sporadically thereafter, with improbably large and impossibly saturated deep blue trumpets. This mountain species is no effete alpine, moist rich soil is its cup of tea.

This is a good white flowered selection of this little creeping European species. Ours came from the UK via our friends at the former Hedgerows Nursery whose plant offerings set a very high bar for the rest of us. This was last listed in the UK in 2008, we believe, and may have been deemed insufficiently distinct from other good white selections to carry its own name. A fine plant nonetheless, and it reminds us of our friends, David and Susie.

Long have we had a love affair with this most noble of the weed clan Plantago. Hailing from Spain where sun and good drainage and robust olive oils and sturdy red wines are so critical to properly growing and appreciating this gem, this adapts easily to the NW. A delight in the rock garden