Spring Standouts: Prime Performers for your Northwest Garden

By Al Dodson & Kate Domoszlay

Need expert ideas on how to fill the gaps in your Spring garden?
Drawing from a collective 52 years of experience as plant buyers for Molbak’s, Al Dodson and Kate Domoszlay have put together a short list of recommended plants that are well-adapted, easy-to-maintain, and ready to lend long-lasting color and beauty to your Northwest garden.

BRIGGS NURSERY

Agapanthus ‘Storm Cloud’
Exposure: Full sun
Size: Clumping foliage 18” tall x 24” wide, flower stalks 3’-5’ tall

This easy-care perennial is sure to attract bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and plenty of compliments. From a compact clump of leaves, large, stately globe-shaped flowers emerge on grand stems to grace your garden from June to September.


SKAGIT GARDENS
 
Bleeding Heart - Dicentra ‘Burning Hearts’
Exposure: Part sun/shade
Size: 10” tall x 12”wide

Easy to grow (and easy on the eyes), this hardy perennial promises long-lasting color and interest for your containers and mass plantings. Its fine- textured, silver-blue leaves form distinct clumps that catch water droplets and shimmer in the sun.  This garden favorite will treat you to lovely deep red blooms from spring straight through September.


BRIGGS NURSERY

Flowering Currant – Ribes Sanguineum ‘Brocklebankii’
Exposure: Bright shade
Size: 5-8' tall x 5' wide

This shade-loving Northwest native grows slowly into a neat, open-branched, upright shrub. Pendulous clusters of rosy pink flowers, well-loved by hummingbirds, unfurl just as the golden leaves emerge. Then the leaves cool to a vivid chartreuse come summer.

BRIGGS NURSERY

Deciduous Azalea Rhododendron ‘Arneson Gem’
Exposure: Full sun
Size: 3-4’ tall & wide

This hardy, deciduous broadleaf shrub is a true jewel. Fragrant and disease-resistant, this prolific bloomer is covered with apricot-colored buds that open to reveal gorgeous golden-yellow flowers with striking pale-orange tips and petal margins.


MONROVIA

Abelia x grandiflora ‘Kaleidoscope’
Exposure: Full sun/part shade
Size: 24-30” tall, 36-42” wide

True to its name, this compact evergreen shrub is blessed with light green and yellow variegated foliage that goldens with age, and deepens with oranges and red in fall.  The shrub also produces pink buds that burst into lovely, white, bell shaped flowers in late summer and keep going well into autumn.


MONROVIA

Berberis thunbergii ‘Golden Ruby’
Exposure: Full sun
Size: 24” tall and wide

A low-maintenance drama queen? It doesn’t exist in Hollywood, but it’s alive and well in this eye-catching beauty. In spring, new growth emerges a striking coral-orange. Later in the season, foliage is accented with a lovely golden margin. This shrub’s slow-growing nature and compact size make it a wonderful easy-care selection for your garden.


MONROVIA

Clematis Cezanne™
Exposure: Partial to full sun
Size: 4-5’ tall, 2’ wide

Introduced at the 2004 Chelsea Flower Show in England, this free-flowering lavender-blue vine is one of Raymond Evison's compact patio varieties bred for containers and small spaces. Let it climb up fences and posts, weave through shrubs and trees and cover itself with showy, long-lasting blooms. Cezanne’s sturdy stems need minimal tying on a support.