Before Gail and I begin in earnest to plan and order for next year’s gardens I had to spend a little time looking back through the year’s pictures. I always need to jog my memory about what worked and what didn’t and remind myself what plants I fell – or stayed – in love with. The following 10 are a sort of random assortment in order of when I noticed them and had to shoot their portrait. Nearly all of these also held their own through the season, in bloom and out of it.

1. Paeonia x ‘Julia Rose’ was one of our new Itoh or intersectional peonies – crosses between herbaceous and tree peonies. They were all pretty great – with huge dessert-plate flowers and clean, gorgeous, fanned foliage for the duration.

2. Baptisia x variicolor Twilite Prairieblues(tm). This picture doesn’t do it justice. The color is slightly weirder – browner – which I love. The trademark blue pea foliage is as handsome as any false indigo out of bloom and I’m excited to see this 2 year old clump just get bigger and better.

3. Where has Campanula punctata ‘Pink Chimes’ been all my life? It’s an oldie but goodie that returned to Blithewold this year after an absence and I hope we never let go of it again. But disappearance actually seems unlikely since it spreads so beautifully we have already distributed some of its wealth from the Display Garden to the North Garden.

4. Oxalis vulcanicola ‘Duotone’. Be still my heart. True-black splotches on variegated purple hearts make this a Gothic stunner despite the sunny yellow and unbelievably persistent flowers. That clump is huge now and still blooming away in the greenhouse as happily as it would as a houseplant. Must has.

5. I’m a sucker for any flowering tobacco but I think I loved Nicotiana ‘Baby Bella’ the best this year. We grew it from seed; I took that picture at the end of June; and it kept on putting up luminous red trumpets until (a really hard) frost. It’s a short one – only about 2-3′ tall so it can be tucked in front and center.

6. I think Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace’ was on my list last year too but I’m thrilled to report that the clumps increased generously and are just as pretty as ever in bloom, and as seedheads still standing now. Maybe next year we’ll try deadheading them for a prolonged bloom…

7. My love for anise hyssop – in any form – is no secret. But I think ‘Black Adder’ is my all-time favorite because of its endless deep purple-blue spires and butterfly magnetism.

8. Salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’ was a new one for us this year and one that I expect will be a total keeper. And not just because it keeps throwing up perfect new growth for cuttings here in the greenhouse. More because those fabulous raspberry tubes opened early – in late summer rather than holding off for fall.

Lastly are two plants that I noticed when they bloomed (in early summer) but that waited until fall to knock my socks off.

9. We moved a two or three year old Indigofera kirilowii from the Rose Garden to a more prominent spot in the Display Garden so I got a better look and appreciation for its pinky-purple flowers and upright form. But I really can’t get over its fall blaze. How could I have missed that? Wowsers.

10. My love for sweetspire (Itea virginica ‘Little Henry’) has been coming on slowly for awhile – for about as long as it has taken to increase from a couple of spriggy twigs to a thicket (we bought it tiny about 8 years ago). But now I love it madly – as much (or more) for its translucent fall color as for its sweet summer dangles.

Are any of these on your top 10? What else?

Last but never least, are the little things I love. You know I am all for outstanding plants – I always have to grow a few big ones that grab attention and don’t let it go for a minute. Fuller’s teasel, castor beans, and my very favorite 6 footer, Gomphocarpus physocarpus ‘Oscar’ (aka hairy balls) should be high on my list because they simply can’t be overlooked.

But flower-an-hour (Hibiscus trionum) can. I know I’ve mentioned it already this year (last year) but I still can’t believe I let this one pass under my radar for so long. This past summer I discovered a love for the way it weaves itself into the August garden here and there and pops open its flowers as if it doesn’t matter who sees how delicate their creamy white flowers are, and how deep their purple throat. But even if I might miss them, the bees never do.

I’m not usually that into purple flowers (or white ones for that matter) but my other diminutive favorite was Cuphea ‘Ballistic’. The ears! We’ve grown C. ‘David Verity’ from cuttings for years and can’t live without it; and we’re becoming just as addicted to ‘Carribean Sunset’ and Mexican giant cigar plant (C. micropetala) – so smitten with that one in fact that despite it nearly breaking our backs we brought our largest specimen back into the greenhouse. But honestly, it’s little ‘Ballistic’ that just gets me. Typical of cuphea, once it starts blooming it never stops and never needs deadheading either.

And what about the plants that would just as soon be walked on as noticed? Gail and I are both consumed with the notion of lawn alternatives and hoping to replace our own sorry looking lawns with anything that won’t waste endless resources – and doesn’t need weekly mowing. My kingdom for a carpet of chamomile underfoot…

Meanwhile, as I look back and we begin to cast forward to next season’s gardens, the eyelash begonias are beginning to bloom, and the maidenhair ferns are sprouting. I simply can’t help focusing on the littlest things.

What little things are you in love with?

As we’re blown toward a new year, I feel bound by tradition – or is it just habit? – to take a look back at the past year and make endless lists of plants to know and grow (and not grow). Below is a continuation of a list I started the other day of the plants I was particularly impressed with and want to see more of. They’re in no particular order, and as always, I hope you’ll click on pictures for a better view or hover over for captions.

Clary sage (Salvia sclarea) stopped everyone in their tracks – not just because at the edge of the path it was in anyone’s way, but with its large fuzzy leaves topped by enormous luminous green(ish-white) salvia spikes. This is an early-summer bloomer with a reputation for being chock full of medicinal properties – perfect for an herb garden. Or a cutting garden if it happens to plant itself there…

Clary sage’s large soft leaves couldn’t hold a candle to wooly morning glory’s (Argyreia nervosa) though. Gail spotted this plant twined 30′ high in a friend’s garden last year and resolved to find one for Blithewold. She planted ours mid-summer, babied it through the heat, and it did its best to cover the vegetable bed arbor by September. It appeared to flower, sort of. We think. But it’s really all about those silver heart-shaped leaves unfolding…

I really can’t believe that Nicotiana didn’t make it onto my Fine Gardening list last year. I am so in love with all of them – maybe I have a thing for large soft leaves. I always thought it was the flowers… Either way, they’re great plants – so easy to grow, so lovely, so long lasting (they only just got hit by an extra hard frost) and so generous with their seeds. I’m always especially thrilled to see N. mutabilis and ‘Lime Green’ come back but I can’t help order more varieties of seeds every year – every available variety, please and thanks.

While I seem to be on the subject of awesome leaves I’ll just add one more (two more) to today’s post. Licorice plant (Helichrysum) is totally in keeping with some of the above for having really great wooly, silvery leaves. What I especially loved about this plant was how it wove itself through its neighbors in the North Garden – it’s never just for containers.

And now for something completely different: We’ve had sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina) in our entrance bed for a few years now so I’m not sure why I noticed it with fresh eyes this year. It could be because the mosquitoes were particularly persisitant and a visitor pointed out how you can use the leaves, lovely leathery, rick racked and fragrant things, as a natural bug repellant (rub on skin). Brilliant. Sweet fern is one of our natives too and if you can give it full sun and terrible soil – say that slope where nothing else grows – it colonizes beautifully.

There are a few more plants on the post-it note next to my keyboard and I have the feeling I’m forgetting something important, so this again is to be continued. Next year. — Happy New Year!

Last year Steve Aitken, the editor of Fine Gardening magazine, sent out a survey inspired by the list of 100 essential country-music songs Johnny Cash shared with his daughter Rosanne. Steve asked for a list of top 10 (plus one) essential plants that we thought every newbie gardener ought to know about. I’m thrilled to see my original answers here (scroll down) and in the January/February issue. It’s funny though to see my list a year later – it could easily have changed 365 times between then and now – and although I stand by my selections because they’re tried and true faves, I have at least 11 more to add (or a baker’s dozen) this year. In no particular order:

(click on pictures for larger view – hover for captions)

Euphorbia x martinii  ‘Ascot Rainbow’. I can’t get over the gorgeousness of this plant. There really does seem to be a rainbow’s worth of colors in the leaves – even more pronounced as the nights got cooler.

I’m really surprised that I didn’t put Eryngium planum on my Fine Gardening list. I adore its prickliness, its stem-to-stern true-blueness, and the fact that at any given sunny midsummer moment there are at least a dozen different species of bees and wasps working it.

Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace’ was a new beebalm (or wild bergamot) for us this year and although I hope it is every bit as thuggish as Jacob Cline, I suspect it’s more mild mannered. It started blooming in early July and stayed upright, mildew-free and lovely as it formed seedheads, which incidentally are now providing us with winter interest Piet Oudolf-style.

Another new one (to us) that I loved and never deadheaded was Agastache ‘Black Adder’. It’s listed as hardy from zones 6-9 so my fingers are crossed that it comes back (no worries when winter continues to act like fall) and if it does return, the only thing I’ll do differently next year is pinch it early on to encourage compactness. (Let go, it grew to a tilt-y 4 feet in our nice soil.)

I can’t leave this genus without tooting a horn for Agastache ‘Acapulco Orange’ and A. x ‘Heatwave’ too. They pick up major speed late summer and carry the garden on their slender shoulders all the way to frost. Can’t beat the tender perennials. And sometimes they come back too – Acapulco Orange did.

Stay tuned for part two. I look forward to finding out if the list I jotted down and started today, changes tomorrow… And I really hope you work on a list of your own and share it – or a link to it – here.

I’ve saved this end of the list for most of the plants I loved well enough to take them for granted — meaning, in some cases I haven’t yet shot their portrait.

6. I’m sure that no top ten list for a dry summer would be truly complete if it didn’t include lavender. (No list of mine would be complete in any case.) They were all perfectly lush despite the wet spring and because of the dry summer – our now venerable clumps of Lavandula x intermedia ‘Grosso’ especially. This year we also tried Lavandula angustifolia ‘Silver Edge’ (among others) in the herb garden and it has a silver lining sort of variegation that could make any gardener more optimistic. I don’t even remember the flowers. Whatever.

7. Lobularia - sweet alyssum – ‘Snow Princess’ on the other hand was all about the flowers. They are big (for an alyssum), honey-fragrant (as they should be), and absolutely unstoppable. We grew it in the Rose Garden and Gail claims to have cut it back weekly. I never noticed that she did that because the plants were rampant always. I think they would look even better draped over a wall or flowing out of a giant pot. Next year…

8. No list of Gail’s would ever be complete without a salvia and this year we have a Goldilocks tie between Salvia ‘Mystic Spires’ (a child-sized version of ‘Indigo Spires’) and enormous Salvia vanhouttei and Salvia elegans (pineapple sage). S. vanhouttei might be my secret favorite though because its deep wine color is so …  intoxicating.

9. All of the basils did really well too but I was especially impressed with the variegated Ocimum basilicum citriodorum ‘Pesto Perpetuo’ because it made a sturdy column and never bloomed so never bolted. Next year I’d like to try shearing it periodically for shape (and using the clippings for a perpetual pesto…) And as far as the blooming basils go, African blue will always be on our top 10 list and we’ve added a generous reseeder, ‘Blue Spice’ to the life list too. (No decent pictures of that one either, alas. My apologies.)

9.5 I do have decent pictures of Panicum elegans ‘Frosted Explosion’, a brandy new annual grass we spotted in the seed catalogs last year. It was a dry and fragile thing towards the end of the season but tucked it with neighbors it provided a fuzzy frothy sort of contrast from start to finish.

9.75 Acalypha wilkesiana (Copper leaf) was another plant that by virtue of being incredibly interesting to look at, made every one of its neighbors look extra fascinating too.

10. By contrast Kalimeris incisa ‘Blue Star’ was more easily overlooked. It’s on the tiny side – not quite Tom Thumb but nearly knee high to a toad stool. The daisy flowers were the color of today’s cold bluish sky and lasted nearly as long as winter feels – it was in constant bloom from June into September.

I know I’m forgetting something I loved a lot. Like all of the nicotianas… What are you wishing I had mentioned?