Plants Plants Plants Plants

I have a list here of my favorite, bulletproof, showstopping perennials, and you, you lucky thing, get to read it.  So let's get the technical shit out of the way.

I live in a Zone 6 (USDA) climate.  I garden on heavy silt/clay soil.  When I started, I had to amend it to a depth of four feet, and open the soil up with lots of compost and general plant frag mixed into it, and then let it rest for the winter before planting the next spring.  It is still very hard stuff, and cracks during the summer.  I could have chosen to work with raised beds, but clay soil is wonderfully fertile, and I tend to get chubby if I don't get out and work, and so I dug beds instead.  Plus playing in the dirt.

When I describe a color, I am using the Pantone scale and their names for the shades.  You can look that up online in Images.

These days you MUST go online and research the pretty face that captured your heart at the plant store.  Write that name down, or just look it up on your phone if you're all technical and shit (I still have a flip phone. Sue me.)  An invaluable source is Daves Garden.com.  I cannot speak highly enough of this site.

If a plant doesn't have a tag, don't buy it.

If it does, pay attention to the type of plant, as "Carnation" and the cultivar name, usually something snazzy like "Red Ribbons".  Now go to Daves Garden.com and enter that information into the search box.  Then scroll down a bit, and you'll run into all kinds of information about this specific plant, including reviews from different people in different climates, and all of this is just pure gold.

First, find out if it needs a high or a low SOIL PH.  This is vital.  How do I check my soil? 1. Call your County Extension Service and ask.  They have extensive soil maps and it's free!  Or, 2. enter "At-home soil testing recipes" into the search box at Daves' Garden.  One of these recipes uses cabbage and water!  You don't have to get all precise.  If a plant wants to live on alkaline soil, and you have acidic soil, that plant will die no matter what you do, short of growing it in a container with special ph adjusted medium.  Well, hearts break, and hearts mend.  Continue your quest.

You will kill plants.  Plants will die for no visible reason.  I still kill plants (usually by overwatering.) My plants still die for no reason.  But The More You Know, the less likely this is to happen.

Perennial means it comes back every year.  It might die back to the ground, or just drop leaves, but it will come back next Spring.

My soil tends to run neutral-slightly acidic.  I go with that.  And given your soil is like my soil, and your climate is like my climate, here's some bulletproof plants that will come back year after year and rock your world.

Roses:
Munstead Wood.  Deep dark dusky purple red, heavenly rich true rose aroma, clean leaves, laughs at high winter winds, freezing temps and dragons and aliens and everything.  It is a four to five foot shrub, which means it's kind of a dome shape if let to do what it wants. Let it.  This is the rose that should be in every garden in the world.  It's a David Austen, and Dave, ya done good.

The Fairy:

This will give you tiny little ping-pong ball sized blossoms - but read on!

It comes in three main colors - an unusual deep pink-the one I have - a pale baby pink, and swan white (I also have this.)  It's classified as a shrub which in real life (as far as this particular rose goes) means that if you leave it along you'll end up with a big, big, truck-sized lump of a plant. I've seen one that was left to run wild that had carpeted an entire hillside, and this is because if a cane stays in touch  with the ground for a month or so, it will sent out a root and start a whole new crown.  But this will not happen, because you will keep it cut back.  And it might require staking and tying for the first two years. Ha.  The work of a mere moment. The reward will be a plant that is in vibrant bloom from spring until fall, and even, weirdly, sometimes into midwinter, on new growth. Trusses can carry up to, no lie, seventy-five buds.  More commonly they range about five to fifteen per truss.  It smells very faintly of rose, except sometimes, for some reason, it smells very strongly indeed of citrus-rose.  It has a huge flush of blossom in the spring, and this means literally more blossom than leaf - and the flowers will slowly fade, and finally experience petal drop - except that new growth will be pushing out new blossoms here and there in pom-poms of blossoms. Now you can leave it like this.  But if you want another huge flush of blossoms instead, trim the spent buds off all the branches.  Good luck.  The plant will respond by pushing lots of new growth, and blossoms.
This is the only rose in my experience that you can throw at the ground and forget.

Rosa Rubrifolia:  This has leaves and stems of dusky bronze, small red prickles, and white, small, apple-blossom type flowers in May. It smells strongly of true rose. It only flowers once a year. But it forms big, shining bronze hips in clusters, which is very pretty against the matte color of the plant.  And then come the first freeze, all those hips turn screaming red.  It grows strongly upward, like a vase, and then will lop over a little on top. Just a very pretty plant all the way 'round, and can take partial shade!


Daylilies:
If you have low spots in your yard, this is where you want to plant a daylily.  They'll do fine anywhere except in day-long shade, but the Common Daylily will will grow happily in standing water or shallow running water.  Yup. The same one your grandma had.

Mahogany Stripe.  While most daylilies tend to be clumpy and rather graceless, this is the exception to the rule.  Thin, strap-like leaves arch over, and tall, mahogany-brown stems start up bold and straight high above the leaves, and bear from five to ten buds.  Each will open into a true, saturated yellow blossom with a mahogany stripe running up the outside of each petal.  This is an exceptionally fine daylily.

Bella Lugosi:  This is a robust daylily. The broad strap-like leaves arch over and tall green stems the width of a crayon start up just over the cluster , each stem bearing from three to ten buds, which open in the Most Dramatic Blossom.  It is a very sturdy blossom, as wide as your hand. The petals are broad, and their edges are slightly ruffled.  The color is a deep, dark, dark burgundy, slightly diamond dusted, blending into a bright lime green throat.  Like Dracula's cape with its red lining.   And limes.

Hemerocallis Lilioaesphodelus: This forms a clump of long strap shaped leaves, and the blossoms carry very high above the crown on fine sturdy stems.  They are large, trumpet shaped,  butter, or lemon yellow, and It Smells Good!

Other Lilies:
Classic Tiger Lily - you cannot go wrong.  They just keep on truckin'.
 You get a single stem covered in alternating short green lanceolate leaves. The very top carries the flower buds, and they bloom from the bottom to the top, one to five at a time, for a period of a month.  Blossoms are large and orange, and have maroon freckles on the inside.  The pollen is deep burnt orange and will stain your clothes and skin, but not permanently.
The blossoms face downward, outward and upward, and can run twenty five buds to a stem. Don't put this in a windy place, although it will do fine with the occasional rain or windstorm.  After five years, it will have made a bulb the size of a grapefruit, and the stalk will be as big around as a shovel handle.  I have one in the yard that is six feet tall!

Double Tiger:  The above, but with two sets of petals instead of one.  Tends to run a bit pale, in the orange sherbet range.  Still a very nice plant.

Any of these lilies will grow here: Tiger Lilies, Star Gazers, Trumpets, Madonna lillies, Turks Caps, Orienpets and cardiocrinums. Look them up at Dave's Garden.com. The colors they've come out with lately are legion, and grow on a plant that shares the familys' sturdy, tall habit.  I have a weird one I found, with deep red-bricky-underoxygenated blood colored petals, very shiny.  It's sort of  macabre, and I love it.

Campanulas, aka Bellflower:

Campanula pocharskyana: A prostrate form.  It has a fine round, ruffly little leaf and the blossoms fringe the plant very generously for two months.  This is what you want to plant in a whiskey barrel or an old washtub, because it drapes excellently. I use it as a ground cover under a tree and it's wonderful there too.  Once the blossoms have fallen, clip away the seedheads, and you'll get a repeat bloom.

Campanula Glomerata:  A stout upright form, rather coarse and a little fuzzy-prickly, which spreads by way of stolons (look it up.)  The blossoms appear in a perfect sphere at the top of the plant, and once those have played out, cut them away for a repeat bloom from the leaf axils of the rest of the stem. 1 to 3 feet tall in an established planting. This is a good, strong blue.  It also spreads by way of stolons, and if it gets out of hand, just stick a shovel in there and take away the part that's gone astray. Refill with soil or compost, of course.

Tall Campanula:  It gets tall.  About five to six feet tall, after a couple of years.  The blossoms are bell shaped and range up the stalks.  Another good, strong blue for the garden.  The stems and leaves can be a little prickly.  Once they're done, cut them off and you'll get a re-bloom from a much shorter plant.

Heucheras:
Palace Purple:  This is grown for the color and the form of the leaves, which are kind of like a geraniums leaves, and very, very dark bronze. After three years, they will be for all intents and purposes black as sin.  They throw up a few tall stems of tiny white, bell shaped flowers, which is a pretty effect, but clear them away as soon as they're finished or the plant will play out over the course of the summer and get straggly.  Why this is, I don't know.  I've had mine in the ground for seven years and they're as big around as your average stand fan.  You want some drama underneath your rose bushes?  Surround them with these.  Instant elegance. This plant can take full sun, but likes partial and light shade best, so it's like a match made in heaven here.  Roses + heuchera "Palace Purple".  Go. Plant.

Purple Frost:  same as the above, but with a white cast, or shimmer, over the dark, dark color of the leaves.  This is a designers' decision here.  I have it, it's very pretty, it works well, and it saves the black underplantings from being too uniform.  The silver really gleams, too.  Wonderful plant.

Green Heuchera: This grows wild here in the PNW, and it likes shade.  That's it.  It is a beautiful plant, and I use it everywhere.

Artemesias
The rule is high and dry with these guys.

Silver Mound is a silver mound. The leaves are silver, and very finely cut, shiny and feathery.  It looks like a little cloud sitting there. Plant it in a high spot in your yard.  It does not like constantly wet soil or leaves.  It withers in the winter, but comes back from the deadest looking thing you ever saw to be something graceful and pretty.

Valerie Finnis, aka Japanese Mugwort:  This is an upright single wand of paper white, nicely formed leaves that spreads and masses by way of stolons (look it up.)  If you don't like where it is, pull it out.  In a mixed border, you can create a nice effect by letting them come up here and there, or in ribbons or swaths.  Cut off the blossom as soon as you see buds, otherwise the plant will get ratty looking.

Clematis:
Radar Love.  Yes, that's really it's name.  Now this is exotic as heck in these parts, and I don't know why, because it is a very agreeable, easy plant.  First of all, it has a downward-facing yellow blossom. Yes, Yellow.  Bright saturated yellow blossoms which are thick, oddly like lemon peels, and are about the size of a small cocktail lemon.  When the blossom falls, it leaves behind galactic puffs of silvery, soft, gleaming filaments.  Meanwhile the foliage is agreeably apple green, and sets the blossoms off nicely. It likes to mass, and will spread wide as well as tall.  Cover a fenceline with this, and you'll have a thing in the air....Radar Love.
Yes.  I said it.

Jackmanii:  This is grandma's clematis.  It has a blue-purple blossom with a modest violet-purple stripe.  It climbs, it spreads, and it holds up for a nice long time.  Once the blossoms drop, you still have a very nice plant which, if you have trained it ornamentally ( encouraged the vines to clamber up and onto things using zip ties or twist ties - once it lays on a surface, the stems of it's leaves with curl tightly around it and take over from there) it will be a nice, sculptural ornament until fall. Once the leaves fall off, it's ugly as homemade soup, but if you've trained it artistically, it makes a nice, black, goth effect, like a hell-creature is stuck to your porch or the side of your house.

Jackmanii, like all clematis (except Radar Love, oddly) has one problem, and that is Clematis Wilt. In this climate, it will happen occasionally, given a damp, foggy, motionless few spring days.  Your plant will grow a few feet and then all the vines will die off and you'll freak out thinking the plant has died, but it hasn't, so cheer up lil' buckaroo.  The trick is to give the area of the plants crown a good spraying in the springtime, just when they're starting to grow, with sulphur mixed with water.  Again, look this up at Dave's Garden.  You are not killing the earth.  You are not poisoning the soil.  You are eradicating a particular strain of fungus from a limited area for a limited time.  Sulphur occurs naturally.  It's just sulphur.  A small bag of it will last you literally for years, and you won't be using more than a half-teaspoon of it per spray bottle and be giving that area it five or so squirts once a year, if that, so get over it.  Visit Daves Garden for instructions.  Dave knows all.

Alpine Blue:  Now, there's several types of clematis all claiming to be Alpine blue.  A small-flowered one with pure cyan blossoms, a medium sized one whose blossoms run to indigo with black stamens, and a large one, with regularly sized big blossoms, that is never the same color every year, ranging from steel blue, Egyptian blue, to Byzantium purple.  All three of these clematis are very nice and quite vigorous.  Just, be ready to be surprised.  The Alpines will give you the truest, most saturated blues of all the clematis varieties - when they feel like it.

Tulips

Any tulip your heart desires will grow here, even the exotics and the speciosas.  Grab a catalogue and go NUTS.  Me being me, I like the speciosas, which are the most lovely small, colorful plants you could imagine and should be grown far more widely.  I cannot say enough about them.  They are unexpected and delightful in the springtime.  Of the taller varieties, I prefer Black Parrot - although any of the parrot line are going to give you a superior plant, and here's why. They have sturdy, relatively short stems, attractive foliage, and they branch.  So unlike the Darwins, which is your typical tall single stem with one single cup shaped blossom, you get a sturdy plant that can stand up to the rain and wind, a magnificent array of color and blossom form, and they rebloom.  Take that, Darwin.

Caution:  Snowdrop, grape hyacinth and mountain bluebells will spread wildly.  But of the three, it is the Snowdrop which will break into your house, drink milk from the carton, drive your car and use your credit card.

 Now, it's also a charming small flower, and massed around a tree trunk they look lovely, but don't expect it to stay there.  It will send out scouts and colonize your entire property.  You will find it, I swear to god, coming up in your houseplants.  I do not know by what mechanism that occurs, but it occurs.  It will come up in your yard, which is charming, but wherever there is one, there will be ten.  I've dug out clumps of the small, white, grape sized bulbs all clustered together that were the size of a cantaloupe, if a cantaloupe were creepy and warty and white and grew underground.  Left to go without division of the bulb mass, it will send up grasslike leaves in a tight carpet, and very few blossoms.  This is geometric growth in it's purest form.  The more there is, the more there will be, except even more-er.

Grape hyacinth and mountain bluebell do this to a lesser degree.  But rather than coming up all over Hells half acre, they spread outward from one location, and you'll find them stacked four deep if you dig up a clump.  Keep the largest bulbs, and put the rest into the compost heap, (or the ditch across the street, like I do.) Again, if you let them go, you'll get a big patch of grassy leaves and very few blossoms.

Daffodils will also diminish if they aren't dug and the clumps of bulbs separated and sorted every other year, otherwise, yup. A big clump of leaves and one lone blossom pining for the fjords.

Narcissus poeticus, Pheasant Eye Jonquil:  see Daffodils.

Irises
German Iris, grandmas' iris, fleur de lis:  These come in every color, form and size you can imagine.  The plant comes up from big tubers that look like ginger root, and come up at a right angle to the tuber, which likes to protrude a bit from the ground or lie just below it, so the first time you plant one, you might have to put a rock or a brick on top of the root to keep it from tipping over.  Once they catch hold, your worries are over. Remove the brick.  Rejoice.
You must like the fans of blue-grey foliage, though, because that's what you're going to get for the majority of the year.  And they are very nice.  This iris blossoms in the early spring, right around the same time you're getting the occasional hailstorm, which will shred the blossoms.  So, two weeks of whatever blossom you like, and there are some true beauties, followed by the main show; the leaves.  Plan for the fans of leaves and plant accordingly.

Bulb irises:  Go crazy.  They're short lived, about three years, in my experience, and then the plant dies.  This is nature. Buy some more.

Japanese, Monet, etc. root-mass irises: Lose your mind.  Again, like the German iris, the main show is going to be the foliage, which grows in tall, grass-green agreeable clumps (4-5 ft on a mature specimen.)  Bear in mind that these too grow right about the time in Spring when we get hailstorms.  The blossoms will be shredded, spotted, or just torn off the plant altogether, so if you like the big saucer-blossomed types, you've been warned.

My favorite Iris of all time is Iris Chrysographes.  Pictures do not do it justice.  It is graceful in all it's parts, and the blossoms look like dragonflies, very elegant in form.  And they run from deepest, deepest purple to coal black, and have a single, thin golden line that runs down the middle of each petal.  It also branches, so you get a month of blossom time instead of two weeks.

Crocosmia:

Lose your mind. It wants full sun, and not to be set in a low place in your yard.  That's it.  You will get glorious fountains of beautiful, beautiful flowers and foliage from June (depending on the particular variety) into late August.  Look it up. An extravagant and graceful plant in all it's parts.

Gladiolas:
Buy them all.  Caveat:  they MUST be staked.  Now you can plan ahead when you order them and get shorter varieties, because really, do you need six foot tall top-heavy, completely unstable plants that fall over and break in half?  No.  No you do not.  Not that you can't stake them, there's nothing objectionable about it, it's just not my idea of a party. The smaller varieties are far more stable, and just as pretty, or as tacky, as your heart desires.

Let's face facts here. A gladiola can come off pretty goddamn tacky because most popular varieties are very flamboyant and almost unnaturally symmetrical. Just letting you know how I feel about gladiolas.  Rock.

The Asters (you know, daisies.)

Excellent Perennial Asters:

Not the things you buy out front of the grocery store in the fall - those are not perennial.  These you get at the nursery, and read the tags, people.

The type called 'common perennial aster' are the most agreeable plants. They come in just about every color of the rainbow, want full sun, and that's it. You can shape them, you can forget them,  they come in short, medium and tall, they rebloom if they're cut back, and the blue ones in particular draw the native pollinators like, well, bees to honey.  They will literally be fogged over with flying insects, particularly bumblebees, and they bloom in the late summer, early fall.  Mine want to try to bloom during the spring sometimes, and depending on my mood, I'll either let this happen, or I'll cut them back about halfway before the blossoms open.  They'll come back in a month and blossom.

Helenium:  Plant.  Watch.  Beautiful sunset colored blossoms from June onward until August. Likes full sun.  Boom shakalaka.

Brown-Eyed Susan:  Bears a beautiful bright, saturated canary yellow (also comes in other colors) daisy type flower with a fluffy brown button in the middle. Very sturdy and upright and not at all coarse. They have odd leaves in that they come in various sizes and shapes, and are a big round smooth paddle instead of the small fuzzy lanceolate kind you find on most common asters.

Echinacea, Purple Coneflower:
These only last for three years. But if you divide it the second year, it starts the clock all over for both - and now you have two Echinaceas!  This might be a little more than you want to do, but they come in such vivid colors and interesting variations that I think it's worth it.  They are tall and sturdy, and make a real vivid point of interest, particularly that sunset-colored center.

Crappy Asters:
Shasta Daisies
I will not grow a Shasta Daisy.  They smell bad, they look weedy, and life is just too short for this nonsense.  There is a double-double cultivar that looks nice, though.  I don't grow it either.

Black Eyed Susans, Gloriosa Daisies:  I've grown these, and while they're beautiful, they flop over and break themselves off.  Rain, wind, a cat walks past, or Just Because. Nope.


Mint:
Common Mint: For a shady, damp area, alongside the north side of a house, this is the shit.  Any type will do, and they come in a huge variety.

Bee Balm: My personal favorite because it smells strongly of lemons when it is brushed.  Cut those blossoms off, though, because it will jump and take over your world.

Monarda:
This is a member of the mint family, and the leaves are used in Constant Comment tea and smell good!  It spreads by stolons, and will form rock hard clumps and strangle itself. You solve this by sticking a shovel straight into the middle of the clump, cutting out a piece, and backfilling with dirt or compost.  They come in a variety of sizes and colors, and want to grow in a patch; you don't just get a single monarda, in other words.  It can be left for about three years before you have to perform surgery, and if it wanders too far, just pluck those stems out of the ground and there you go.  I grow the very tall Jacob Cline selection, which is a red shade, a weird mix of Pantone Flame and Pink Yarrow.  I also grow the dwarf variety in true purple, and it wanders around and adds volume to your color balance effortlessly. When the top pom-pom begins to get ratty looking, cut them down to the second whorl of leaves and they will rebloom. Blooms from late May through to early August, and sometimes later if cut back.

Pretty weeds:
Centranthus Ruber: also known as Red Valerian and Jupiters' Beard.  The best thing to do is to look this up online and pick a color. The flowers come in spires off the end of the branches.  Its found most commonly in pale pink with a dark pink throat, and a raging cerise with a fuchsia throat.  You can get it in white, you can get it in dark red.  And once you have it, you'll have it for good.  It spreads by fairies, like a dandelion (my botanical terminology fails me here.)  The leaves and stems are a light blue-green, on the jade side, with a spreading habit, and very pretty.  If you don't like where it is, it breaks off and there you go.

Linarea pupurea:  A very vertical presence, and an attractive one too. Strongly upright, vase shaped, and toppled with a spire of little blue flowers with a pink throat.  The leaves and stems are a middle green to grey green. It spreads by seed, and once again, once you have it, you have it for good.  Still, like the centranthus, if you don't like it, it cracks off readily, and you're free!
It's presence in the garden reads light blue grey.  It looks best massed, or with other things close by.


Trees and shrubs:

Elder:
I grow Sambucus niger, which is deep purple-black.  There is a lace-leaved variety which is also very nice.  In the middle of spring they will put out an umbel of screaming pink, tiny blossoms. It will set tiny black berries. You can keep an elder cut down to form a shrub, or let them go, and you will get a nice small tree about eight feet high.  either way, no issues whatsoever.  The green leaved wild varieties are just as showy and agreeable.  They have white flowers, and will set either a Christmas red or a pure black berry, which is extremely pretty.  Birds love them.  Bees adore them.


Dogwood:
The red osier variety blossoms in umbels of small white flowers, not the big, four petaled blossom you see on other varieties. The flowers last for three weeks. These flowers, like the blue asters, are a magnet for pollinators.  The whole tree will be humming with them.  New growth comes in flaming red all year round. It is a very nice small tree indeed.
Note: Do NOT hack it off to the ground so that it comes up like a fan.  Everybody does this and it's just played.  This is such a graceful small tree in it's own right; let it free!


Magnolia:

They all seem to grow here.  My preference is the Star Magnolia, because the flower form is unusual, swan white and gorgeous in effect,  and the petals doesn't end up all over the ground looking like used Kleenexes the way the large-blossomed varieties do.  Just my preference.  If I had the room, I'd grow a big old pink grandma magnolia and let it roam free.  And rake a lot.

Rhododendron:

Go nuts.  I do not grow it because I do not like it, which is just me. You only get a week of blossoms, the rain knocks them off, the wind knocks them off, they fall on the ground and look like gross used Kleenexes.  It loves this biome, though. I've seen hundred year old specimens the size of a two storey house. Truth.
A reminder:  some of the hardest colors in the flower world grow on rhodies.  When you get a red, you get a Pantone Cherry Red in huge pompoms all over the plant. If you live in a pale pink or a sea green house, this is going to look gross. Similarly the purples. There is nothing uglier than a red and a purple rhodie planted together.  Unless it is a red and pale lavender rhodie planted together.  Yech. And you are going to have this plant for a long, long time.  It will outlive you, in fact.  Think.

They come in a huge variety of colors and shades.  If I grew one, it would be the one with the Pantone Hyacinth Violet - colored blossoms. I've seen this as a mature specimen and it is truly stunning.

Blueberry:

Yes, blueberry.  It stays small, it can be trimmed into a nice shape, it is an attractive plant, and you get blueberries.  Bonus point:  It turns flaming orange red in the fall!
(Now, you can buy a shrub called "Burning Bush" which is a nice, inoffensive shrub.  All it does is sit there and be small, green and agreeable, until first frost, when it turns screaming incandescent red - and then the leaves drop, boom. Done.   I say choose the blueberry.  The little white blossoms are pretty, the bees love them, you get blueberries, and fall color.)

Stewartia:

This is a small-10 ft tops - deciduous tree that has an upright habit, so instead of forming a canopy, it forms a loose spire.  It has a pretty green leaf, interesting peel-ish bark, and it gets covered with white flowers in June.  Pretty white flowers like large apple blossoms!  It's just a really good, interesting little tree.


Japanese maples:
Red Lace Leaf maple
Yellow Moon maple
Red common as dirt Japanese maple

The Red Lace Leaf Maple will form the most graceful, beautiful plant, if given time and patience.  As in years.  Sometimes this tree will slump down and make a little Mt. Fuji, which is nice if that's what you go for.  I trained mine into a rising spiral, so that the light and air could move through it and show off the form.  Now, I didn't do a really formal clip job on it, I just selected for shape and left it natural.  It is truly a gracious little tree, and will eventually end up from five to ten feet tall, but count on five feet.  If you never cut it, it will just kind of crawl along the ground and eventually make a little haystack of red leaves, which if this is what you want then you do you. The leaves are dark red and finely cut.

The Yellow Moon maple is a sweetheart of a plant.  Just a sweetheart.  The leaves are golden on red stems, small and palmate. The bark is smooth, and it likes to form a canopy.

Red common as dirt Japanese maple:  This is the one you see in civic plantings and in peoples yards.  It will eventually get about ten to fifteen feet tall.  It carries it's leaves in plateaus - think of a stack of different sized plates. There you have it's form. The leaves are much smaller than sugar maples or bigleafs, and will stay a bricky red, with new growth being brighter.  Tough as nails and pretty, too.

Buddleia:

They all grow here.  The yellows, the blues, the pinks, etc.  Buddleia loves this area like a dog loves to sniff butt.  It is a wandy, open shrub-small tree. It's form is very loose and spreading, and when in full bloom, left to it's own devices in the middle of a yard or a planting, is a very pretty and graceful sight.

Buddleia davidii:  This plant is classified as an invasive species in Washington State and British Columbia.  Do I have one? I've got four.  Is it invasive?  Only near watercourses, along creeks and rivers.  I am a smoooooth criminal.  It's leaves are silver underneath and green grey on top, lanceolate, and each branch ends in a crowded spire of bright blue little flowers with orange throats.  It smells like honey.  Gloriously. Intoxicatingly.  I have it planted all around my bedroom window, and in the summer?  Oh Myyyyyyyy.

Buddleia "Black Knight":  Has a dark, dark blue black flower.  A little more upright than the davidii.  I bought it because a. Buddleia is pretty and smells like honey, and b. John Cleese.

Buddleia 'Lo and Behold'  "Purple Haze."   This is a dwarfed version, hence the cutey cute 'Lo and Behold' line name, and so it does not have as open or wandy a form as the others.  You get a six foot tall bush that you can trim and shape that comes on strong with glorious long spires of purple flowers against forest green matte leaves.  It is wonderful.  And face it, like I wasn't going to get a plant named 'Purple Haze', right?  This is worth having. It's a little gem. It is bright, saturated Pantone purple. God I love it.

Barberry
Take your choice.  Green to black, red to pink, variegated, you name it, they have it.  Barberry is what you want to have if you have problem neighbors. It doesn't grow thorns, it grows thousands of long, thin needles tipped with fomic acid, which break off in the skin and causes an itching allergic reaction.  If you had a hedge of these and kept it pruned so it grew very dense and tight, you wouldn't have a worry in the world, no matter what time of year. I have one, a miniature that I use as a specimen, because I am horribly allergic to it, and break out in hives.  It isn't pretty.

 The problems with barberry are a. If you accidentally fall into it, because Oh fuck no. and b. Dogs love to piss on barberry.  They'll pass up everything else to piss on a barberry, and I have no idea why, but I've seen it.  If you rinse the plant off when you start seeing an area that's yellowing, no worries, it will grow back.  If not, the entire plant will get pissed to death by dogs.  Possibly cats and other animals too.

The solution?  Put a large rock next to the plant.  Or an old milk can, or what have you.  Animals that mark are tagging their territory.  Nine times out of ten they will choose a large, flat, unbroken surface over a plant to leave their messages. Just keep that rinsed off and it's all good.
Now, if you have a hedge of them?  Animals like to mark significant points of interest in their environment, like tree trunks and big rocks and the corners of things, like buildings - and hedges.  Put the large rock, milk can, old car or what have you at the outside corner of the hedge.

You see what you can learn here?