By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer
Photographs courtesy the Elisabeth Carey Miller Botanical Garden

To garden well in mild, damp parts of western Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, it helps to work from a proven list of great, locally successful plants. The Elisabeth Carey Miller Botanical Garden has put together just such a list: called Great Plant Picks, it is updated annually by a team of 40 volunteer horticulturists who seem to leave no garden unscouted in their quest for horticultural champs.

  This year’s list, released just last month, includes about 90 trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, bamboos, succulents, and bulbs. I was delighted to see that Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’, Fargesia robusta, and Tulipa clusiana made the lists. All have graced my garden for years. And I’m dying to try Campanula lactiflora 'Prichard's Variety', ‘Sunset’ fern, and white enkianthus.

The list has also inspired me to take another shot at growing naked ladies and Acer shirasawanum ‘Aureum’, both of which have died out in my garden. I’m comforted by Tony Avent’s words that you haven’t failed with a plant until you’ve killed it at least three times.

You can download a pdf of this year’s winners, plus more than 500 past winners, from the organization’s web site at www.greatplantpicks.org.