Hey folks, it is your GPOD editor Joseph here… My northern Indiana garden has frozen solid, so gardening activities are on hold here, but I’ve been spending some time thinking about the upcoming spring plant shopping season! I’ve been going through old photos and making a list of plants that I’ve seen in other gardens, or used to have in my own former gardens, and would like to get for my current growing space. So, today, I’m sharing a bit of my garden wish-list for the sunny parts of my garden!

This sweet little flower is the double-flowered form of a plant called cuckoo flower (Cardamine pratensis ‘Flore Pleno’). I saw it years ago in a garden in Oregon, and the gardener was kind enough to give me a piece. It thrived and bloomed like crazy for a couple years, then I moved down to Virginia for a few years and the heat was too much for it. I’d love to grow it again, but seems to be impossible to find for sale in the US.

Here’s a closer look at the flowers.

This is my favorite hardy mum – Chrysanthemum ‘Peach Centerpiece’ (Zone 4 – 9). This variety thrived for me for years, but then I moved a couple of times and lost it. Time to get it again! It looks so great in the garden each fall, and is a wonderful cut flower too.

Speaking of cut flowers… this is a big vase full of the rose ‘Buff Beauty’. This big shrub rose did so well for me, being very vigorous, cold hardy, and pretty disease resistant. But I didn’t carry it with my on my last move. Time to get a new one!

Closer look at one of the flowers on ‘Buff Beauty’. I love that color!

Gas plant (Dictamnus albus, Zone 3 – 8) is such a great perennial: It handles drought well, very cold hardy, and I’ve never seen deer or rabbits touch it. And in early summer, the flowers are amazing! The only downside is that it takes a few years to get established and start really flowering. That and it is a bit hard to find for sale sometimes. Oh, and the mature plants don’t transplant well, which is why none came with my on my last move.

But oh I love those flowers!

This is a rose, but quite a different one. This is Rosa primula (Zone 4 – 9), a wild species rose, and it blooms earlier than about any other rose with these masses of sweet, soft-yellow flowers. This is a specimen I saw at a botanic garden… high time I found a spot for one at home.

This is the stunning blooms of a Japanese water iris, Iris laevigata ‘Colchesterensis’ (Zone 5 – 9). I actually grew this plant from seed over a decade ago, but then didn’t take it with me on a move. I just love the incredible pattern on the petals. It can grow in standing water, but in my experience it does just fine in regular garden soil as long as it is on the wet side.

Do you have plants on your wish list? Or favorites in your garden that you think other gardeners should be wishing for? Send us photos! We’d love to see them!

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