Browse Plants

Asparagus is a perennial vegetable whose edible shoots are harvested in spring. Male plants produce better crop yields because they do not flower or fruit. The foliage is garden worthy because of its tall size and masses of feathery, delicate texture. Female plants may self-seed abundantly. Plants do not like to be moved, so choose a permanent location. Foliage is useful in floral arrangements.

(1 user review)

This is an ovate, glossy-leaved plant usually grown as a houseplant. In early summer, it produces fleshy, bell-shaped, cream colored flowers with maroon interiors.

This plant flowers profusely and for an exceptionally long time, from early summer to mid-fall. Its flowers are violet-blue.

This is a short-growing aster with lilac-blue flowers and creeping rootstocks. Many cultivars exist. It can be used on steep slopes for erosion control.

This is a short-growing aster has creeping rootstocks and pink, daisy-like flowers with yellow centers. It can be used on steep slopes for erosion control.

This clumping, bushy perennial has slender stems and small, lance-shaped, medium green leaves. From late summer to late fall, it produces white flowerheads with yellow centers to a half-inch across. Its cultivars may bear flowers tinged pink or blue.

(1 user review)

Although it’s valued for its autumn blossoms, ‘Lady in Black’ creates a stir from the moment its dusky purple leaves unfurl in spring. By summer’s end, thousands of tiny dark buds dot the densely branched 3-foot-tall plant, promising an explosion of color.

This striking, richly-textured, deciduous ground cover has heart-shaped leaves that turn mauve in autumn. Purple, blue, or white flowers appear in late summer to early fall.

Strong, almost woody, stems bear large sprays (to 10 inches) of violet-purple flowers.

(9 user reviews)

Growing to less than 2 feet tall and wide, 'Purple Dome' covers itself with semi-double, deep purple, daisy-like flowers from late summer to midfall. In addition to being mildew resistant, it attracts butterflies. It's great as a border specimin and as a cut flower.

(2 user reviews)

'October Skies' is a dwarf aster that is low to the ground and mounding. It flowers in the fall when most other plants have finished for the season, covering itself with hundreds of dark sky-blue flowers.

Tatarian aster is an impressive, stately perennial with a flowering height of 3 to 6 feet. It can look you in the eye yet require no staking. More important, this aster flowers longer than any other garden aster, beginning in late September and early October and continuing into November. The 1-inch-wide, light lavender flowers are a magnet for local and migrating monarch butterflies. This plant tolerates many soil types, can form large colonies in a few years, and is easily divided.

This is a mat-forming aster with thick, almost leafless stems that support solitary, violet-blue ray florets and orange-yellow disk florets.

In late spring, lavender-pink flowers rise above this plant’s lacy, fernlike foliage, which forms an airy network beneath. The blooms appear a bit later than typical for other astilbes, and they extend later into summer. ‘Maggie Daley’ is moderately drought tolerant once established. Pair it with Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum, Zones 5–8) for a beautiful combination. And deer and rabbit resistance is the pièce de résistance! -Kielian DeWitt, Fine Gardening #147 (Octover 2012), page 76

(1 user review)

This is a dwarf astilbe with attractive red-green leaves and reddish pink flowers in broad, dense conical groups. Its blooms appear mostly in summer.

(1 user review)

This unique species bears large, rounded leaves that resemble lily pads and seem to defy gravity.

(2 user reviews)

Masterwort produces many small, ivory flowers that are flushed pink and bloom continuously throughout the summer and fall, wafting a sweet scent. Like Queen Anne’s lace, each masterwort blossom is an umbel of tiny flowers, framed by a collar of papery bracts.

(1 user review)

The broad silvery leaves of ‘Ursula’s Red’ have a showy burgundy band at the center of the leaves in spring. This plant can double in size in a single growing season, as it spreads from rhizomes. Though deer do like it, it may simply grow more fronds and not show any lasting damage. --Michael Ruggiero, Regional Picks: Mid-Atlantic, Fine Gardening issue #127

This spectacular perennial hybrid has 18-inch-tall spires of buttery yellow flowers in late spring and beautiful blue-green foliage throughout summer. Tough, exceptionally drought tolerant, and extremely long-lived, it's the southern substitute for the much sought-after lupine. 'Carolina Moonlight' has an adaptable, easy-to-grow nature and makes a great companion for other rugged plants such as ornamental grasses.