Common names for plants can often create confusion, especially among botanical nerds like myself.

The main reason we like to rattle off multi-syllabic Latin names is that there is never any question as to what plant we are talking about.

In the case of common names however, many different plants can share similar common names.

This little Northwest mist we just experienced reminds me that this is the time of year when all those little weed seeds that have been lying dormant in our soils suddenly get a notice from Mother Nature that it is time to wake up and start growing.

There are three environmental signals that cause this response…

When I purchased Sunnyside Nursery there was a large fig tree growing in the back yard next to the old carriage house. At the time I didn’t think much about it and the old fig got uprooted and relegated to the compost pile.

Little did I know that a cutting from that very same fig would find its way back to the nursery almost 25 years later.

This is the time of year that separates the hard-core gardeners from the casual gardeners, or what we like to refer to in the trade as “yardeners.”

It should be no surprise that my hidden agenda has always been to convert “yardeners” into gardeners, so to that end, here are some tips to help make it happen… 

Summertime in the Northwest is a great gardening time. There is lots of sunshine and warm soils to make plants grow, and as long as we remember to water, we can have some amazingly productive veggie gardens and luxurious landscapes (or at least some bodacious containers). 

There are few things that give me as much pleasure as being in my garden surrounded by a well fed and properly watered landscape.

Plants that are well-cared-for not only shine and exhibit brighter colors of flowers, but they also exude a certain energy that lifts up those around them.

Ninebarks are deciduous shrubs native to North America that possess many redeeming qualities that make them good candidates for our gardens and landscapes. For starters, they are tough as nails and will grow almost anywhere in our northwest gardens.

For Northwest gardeners, the genus Salvia provides us with a wide range of plants to brighten up our gardens in the summer.

June is one of the best months to plant in the northwest so don’t miss a chance to try out some of these long bloomers, you won’t be sorry you did.

Euonymus japonica is a nice shrub with glossy, one-inch round leaves that can be found in many commercial settings due to its ease of growing, tolerance of a range of soils and sunlight conditions.

Varieties like “Silver King,” “Silver Queen,” and “Chollipo,” with their bright green and white variegated foliage, are commonly found.

Most of the time when gardeners talk about azaleas we think of evergreen foliage.

But there is a whole other exciting group of azaleas, that while they lose their leaves in winter, have incredible hot yellow, orange, salmon, or red flowers in spring and great fall foliage color in the autumn.