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More "obedient" in the garden than regular obedient plant... a little shorter, and hasn't multiplied or spread much in the 2 years that I've had it. Still prone to sprawling, so if you want upright stems for your vase you'll need to stake it. I really like the variegation, which stays crisp & white from spring to fall.

My small clump has been blooming faithfully for several years now. Jmorth is right -- this little guy is tough!

Kerria is a beautiful, arching, open, airy-looking shrub with wonderful, long lasting spring color. New shoots may pop up a foot or more from the main shrub, making this plant easy to propagate. Dig under the shoot to loosen it and determine which way the root is going, then sever it with a sharp shovel thrust. Potting it up for a season or two lets it develop a good rootball before planting out. My "start" was just stuck directly into the ground, and it sort of hung in there for several years before finally taking off.

These were supposed to put on a lovely show every year in front of these daffodils, but somebody found them tasty, I think. I initially planted them with white giant crocus, but none of those even came up the first spring... The following spring, all but one of these tulips had disappeared also. Greggii tulips persist and multiply well in my front garden, but I suspect the squirrels or voles found them in back. So if you plant them, consider putting them in bulb cages or working some sharp gravel into the soil to deter digging paws!

The huge center of this split-corona daff makes it easy to see why this class is often called the "Butterfly Daffodils." Very fancy looking and a nice change of pace from "regular" daffodils! The color is definitely apricot or peachy-pink.

One of the last to bloom in my garden, 'Thalia' provides a gentle end to the spring daffodil show. Their delicate windswept looking blooms are sweetly fragrant, not as individually powerful as 'Tahiti' or some of the other double and split-corona daffs, but with none of the muskiness of paperwhites, either. They increase well for me; 50 bulbs has turned into a nice little drift in the past 5 or 6 years.

The first double daffodil I've grown and still one of my favorites. I love the little sparkles of brilliant orange color, and the scent is such a sweet perfume! It's a moderate increaser for me.

The orange and lemon ruffled centers of these blooms always draw comments. The outward-facing blooms are easy to appreciate, even from a distance.

The blooms are startlingly lovely but hard to appreciate in the garden due to their tendency to hang downward.

This is my earliest blooming daffodil -- Jan 31, in both 2012 & 2013. It's just a nice basic yellow daffodil, but what a welcome sight! As you can see, it's unfazed by February snow. :-)

We let them ripen until the outer ridges were dark brown and still found the flavor very bland. They are totally beautiful as a garnish when sliced, though!

This was my earliest-blooming daffodil until I planted 'Rijnveld's Early Sensation'. I would appreciate them far less if they bloomed with the more showy daffodils that follow them!

Purple asparagus is sweeter than green varieties I've tried, with a slightly nutty taste (to my tongue, anyway). I don't know how they taste cooked; I just eat them raw. I do know they turn green when cooked, and you can see from the cross-section image I posted that they are green inside like any other asparagus. I only have a 6x8 ft. asparagus patch, so I've opted to plant 'Purple Passion' exclusively. So far, they're doing pretty well! A friend who has also started growing them says she thinks they're a little slower to increase than the green ones -- but definitely worth the wait!

Shorter clematis varieties like this one are great candidates for climbing up and through small trees... or just let them "scramble" through your perennial border! No need to go nuts trying to find a trellis or other support for every clematis you want to grow.

These shrubs never knock my socks off when I see just one... but every time I see this hedge of them at the Philly Flower Show, I think, WOW! I need to get some of these!

Eye-catching, in a Seuss-ian sort of way. I overheard somebody say it looked like a cross between a birdsnest fern and a christmas cactus, with the branching formation at the ends of the fronds. The 2013 Philly Flower Show is the first place I've seen one of these.

I love these little guys! They come up early, with my snow crocus (C. chrys.), and the squirrels don't seem to bother them. Leaves and sometimes buds will get nibbled by bunnies, but much less an issue than with the giant crocus. I first came across them as a "Martha Stewart pick" -- and I see why she thought they were special. They've multiplied well at the edge of a garden (dry in summer), less well (but still persisted) in a grassy area. They open to reveal a cheerful sunny heart and close up again at night or on a cloudy day.

I'd heard these were only hardy to zone 7, so I planted mine in a protected "pocket bed" by a big rock (I'm zone 6). There are a couple other lycoris there, so I wasn't really sure if these had come up with foliage this spring or not, so I was absolutely delighted to see these bloom stems shoot up after a recent rain. They're stunning from a distance and even more lovely close up, thanks to the unexpected and brilliant blue at the ends of the petals.

This is one of the showiest columbines I've grown. The spurred bicolor blooms are very striking, almost black & white. It's one of the tallest columbines I have also, so it really gets noticed.

This is one of the true-bluest flowers I've ever come across! The first ones I planted were smaller blooms, maybe an inch across, but the ones I put in last fall are perhaps two inches in diameter. I noticed this morning that small bulbils seemed to be forming toward the center of some of the blooms, so maybe it reproduces similarly to the "wild onion" that pops up around here... I'd be happy to have it naturalize and spread around my perennial border! (Hopefully I won't regret saying that, LOL)