Browse Plants

This dwarf cultivar of grassy-leaved sweet flag (to 10 inches tall and 6 inches wide) has linear fans of semi-evergreen, glossy, pale green and cream-striped leaves that have an overall golden effect. This is an aquatic perennial with showy foliage for shallow water margins.

This aquatic perennial is semi-evergreen and showy, with grassy, striped foliage that reaches less than 1 foot tall. The species is native to East Asia. Use it in a situation where its diminutive size can be appreciated along the margins of a pool or in a bog garden.

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Actaea rubra bears white flowers from spring to early summer on plants up to 2 feet tall and 1 foot wide. In late summer, glossy red berries develop. A few cultivars exist. This woodland perennial is native to the U.S.

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There are many cultivars available of this fast-growing annual. They are best used as bedding, edging, or container plants. Panicles of blue, pink, purple, or white flowerheads arise from oval, downy leaves in midsummer and continue until frost. They have a soft, fuzzy appearance and attract butterflies.

This early, compact bloomer grows to only about 6 or 7 inches tall. With its icy blue-purple flowers, it works well when planted tightly along the foreground of a bed. Its color blends easily with most other hues and textures. -Julia Jones, Designing with annueals, Fine Gardening issue #120

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Allium 'Globemaster' is a true showstopper, growing to about 32 inches tall. Very large, majestic purple spheres up to 8 inches across bear numerous star-shaped, deep lilac flowers in May and June.

This plant produces dense clusters of bright blue flowerheads up to 1 inch wide. Its leaves clasp its stem and die back before flowering.

For long-lasting bright yellow flowers that sparkle in midsummer, try Allium moly. It is robust, hardy, and an excellent cut flower, naturalizing and increasing happily in the sun in most garden soils. The cultivar 'Jeannine' flowers earlier and produces larger umbels on sturdier stems.

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The purple or white pom-pom flowers of chives top aromatic stems in summer. The leaves are edible and have a mild onion flavor; the flowers can be used as garnishes. Plants grow in dense clumps to 2 feet high. Use chives in a cottage, herb, or vegetable garden, or in containers.

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The spine-tipped leaves of this aloe grow in a beautiful spiral; mature plants have five rows of leaves growing either clockwise or counterclockwise. It is very hardy, but will rarely flower. A native of Lesotho, Africa, it is extremely endangered due to overcollecting.

A. ficoidea ‘Red Threads’ is a slender-leaved perennial selection that doesn't wander, forming a textured carpet in shades of deep burgundy. A single plant makes a mound about 8 inches tall and 14 inches wide. It blooms on and off all year, but you may never notice. The small, pale flower buttons are held in the leaf axils, where they are nearly indistinguishable from the foliage unless you're paying close attention. Use 'Red Threads' at the base of taller plants in the border to provide vibrant color echoes or contrasts. Grow as a warm-season annual in cooler climates, mass the plants in beds, or use in a formal knot garden as the Victorians did.

(1 user review)

This plant produces a great low-growing mat of flowers. The cheerful starlike blossoms come in pink, blue, and white, and the attractive finely cut leaves disappear soon after flowering.

These plants are noted for their lovely, 1/2- to 1- inch-diameter crystalline white flowers. Resembling little pinwheels, each flower is composed of 6 to 10 colorful sepals spinning around a nub of lime-green and yellow. Their typical color is pure and bright white, but you might find the tinted soft rose Anemonella thalictroides f. rosea at a specialty nursery.

The only member of its genus, rue anemone is a tuberous perennial native to the woodlands of eastern North America. 'Rosea' has pink, fragile, cup-shaped flowers on slender stems from spring to early summer, a long bloom sesaon for a spring wildflower. It often goes dormant in summer. Its flowers resemble a small anemone and its leaves resemble Thalictrum (meadow rue), hence its common name of "rue anemone." Use this delicate, small plant in a shady rock garden, in a woodland or native plant garden, or as underplanting in a shady shrub border

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As an herb, A. graveolens is commonly grown for the culinary attributes of its leaves and seeds. Its distinctive foliage texture and flower color and form make this plant a nice companion in a mixed border. It provides a valuable food source for butterfly larvae and attracts beneficial insects also.

Upright, low perennial with deep mauve to violet two-lipped flowers blooming all summer. Angelonia are superlative container plants, and can also be grown as bedding annuals.

This plant bears terminal racemes of two to three nodding blue flowers, sometimes with white tips.

This airy perennial has delicate dark-green leaves and many nodding, light-yellow flowers from mid-spring to midsummer. 

The fan columbine produces short, plump, nodding, blue-purple flowers with white petal tips.