Browse Plants

'Anne Greenaway' infuses the garden with excitement, with its bright chartreuse leaf margins. It grows up to 8 inches tall and 18 inches wide and is topped with lilac-mauve flowers in late spring. The stems root where they touch the soil, so it's easy to lift and transplant rooted stems to increase your stand. It makes a nice groundcover in a shady garden around ferns, hostas, heucheras, or geraniums.

(1 user review)

Lamium is a genus with many cultivars that are outstanding foliage plants for the shade, most notably ‘White Nancy’. This evergreen ground cover’s beautiful, 1- to 2-inch-wide leaves are silvery white with green edges and have a quilted appearance. Clusters of white flowers appear from spring through summer.

(3 user reviews)

‘Pink Chablis’ has pink flowers above silvery gray leaves edged with dark green. These trailing plants make fine ground covers or cascaders.

A deciduous conifer with a pyramidal growth habit, European larch has pendulous lower branches. In spring, needles emerge a shiny chartreuse, turning to deep green by summer and to sunset gold in late fall. Cultivars include 'Pendula', a weeping cultivar; 'Fastigiata', a narrow and upright variety; and 'Pyramidalis'.

Fissured and scaly bark bark is tinted rust-brown in winter. Purplish red winter shoots are covered in a waxy bloom. Gray-green or bluish green leaves grow to 1.5 inches long.

(1 user review)

This hardy lavender stands out for its unusually large, dark blue-purple flowers, silvery green foliage, and heavy fragrance. It is often used in perfumes. Growing to 30 inches tall and nearly as wide, 'Grosso'  has very long flower spikes and blooms from midsummer into autumn. It is especially attractive as an edging.

(1 user review)

'Violet Intrigue' exhibits the typical handsome gray foliage of good lavenders, but its form and flowers are particularly noteworthy. Each stem is strongly upright, and requires no staking, and the blooms are a deep violet that remains vibrant even when temperatures rise. Other than occasional deadheading, no additional maintenance chores are required.

English lavender has silvery gray, aromatic foliage topped in summer with lavender-blue to dark purple flowers on long stems.

This late-blooming perennial is a go-to for shots of crisp white and happy yellow in the fall garden.

(8 user reviews)

This Shasta daisy cultivar has especially large white flowers with yellow centers held on 3- to 4-foot-tall, strong stems that don't need staking. It also blooms later than most of the other cultivars. It originated in a Southern garden, but it is very adaptable to other climates. The masses of crisp, bright blooms are a mainstay of the summer border.

One of the first plants to emerge, this 24-inch-tall bulb bears nodding white bells as early as mid-January. Blooms are faintly chocolate-scented; leaves are glossy, erect, and strap-shaped.

Lewisia cotyledon is an evergreen perennial of incredible beauty and well-balanced proportions. Fleshy leaves emerge in flat rosettes of spoon-shaped dark green leaves. Funnel-shaped flowers to 1 inch across are borne in compact panicles. The true species has candy-striped pink flowers. Hybrids bloom in shades from white to magenta.

(1 user review)

This evergreen perennial has broad, lance-shaped mid-green leaves  to 4 inches long, tinted with purple and borne in basal rosettes up to 18 inches in diameter. Open, funnel-shaped, pink-to-cream flowers to 3 inches across appear once in early spring.

This tuberous perennial has dense clusters of linear, rough leaves borne in basal tufts to 16 inches long. Dense spikes, up to 18 inches long, of button-like lavender-purple flowerheads are borne in late summer and early autumn. Blooms open from the top of the inflorescences downward.

(2 user reviews)

This hardy herbaceous perennial has grass-like, strappy leaves and 3- to 5-foot-tall spikes of purple-pink flowers in late summer and early fall. Native to the eastern and southern United States, this tough perennial prefers reliably moist soil but will tolerate drought. It provides a bold, vertical element to mixed borders and attracts bees and butterflies. It has been observed to be resistant to deer browsing and self-sows freely. The flowers are suitable for cutting.

(5 user reviews)

This cultivar of a U.S. prairie plant offers the garden spikes of purple, fuzzy-looking flowers that open from the top down on plants up to 2 feet tall and 18 inches wide. The show starts in late summer and attracts butterflies and bees. Grow it in a moist meadow or border. The flowers are also beautiful in a vase.

(2 user reviews)

In early spring, fleshy stems unfurl and are topped by rounded burgundy leaves. By June, this plant looks splendid, with upturned leaves and their rich purple undersides. 'Britt Marie Crawford' may wilt in the hot noonday sun, but soft shade soon revives it. At the start of summer, right golden daisy-like flowers bloom, contrasting boldly with the foliage. -Matt Griswold, Regional Picks: Northeast, Fine Gardening issue #127

(1 user review)

The aptly named ‘The Rocket’ is virtually indestructible if sited in damp shade. In spring, toothed green foliage unfurls to form an attractive mound. Flowering begins in midsummer when stalks packed with little buds rise up to 4 feet tall. Little golden daisies, opening from bottom to top, shoot upward like rockets to the sky.

Privet is a bushy, deciduous or semi-evergreen shrub with oval to lance-shaped dark green leaves. White flowers borne in panicles to 2 inches long in early summer and midsummer mature to spherical black fruit.