Browse Plants

(2 user reviews)

Blanket flower is a bushy annual that produces red or yellow (or red and yellow) flowers over a long season. The blooms are daisy-shaped with a dark purple central disk. Growing to about 18 inches tall, this native of central and southern U.S. and Mexico is nice in a meadow, cut flower garden, border, or rock garden.

A native of South Africa, summer hyacinth sends up spikes of lovely white flowers in late summer amidst dark green, strap-like foliage, when many other perennials are done blooming. The tall spikes are fragrant and especially dramatic planted with darker foliage or flowers.

(1 user review)

This gardenia cultivar features a very tight, upright form that is perfect for smaller gardens. It also boasts increased cold tolerance while maintaining the lustrous dark green foliage and abundant fragrant blooms you’ve come to expect from this genus.

(6 user reviews)

This North American wildflower is a bushy, clump-forming, vase-shaped perennial with lance-shaped or spoon-shaped, toothed leaves on slender, wand-like stems. Leaves may be occasionally spotted with maroon. Loose panicles of 4-petaled white flowers open only a few at a time and fade slowly to pink, blooming from late spring to early autumn.

This superb plant exhibits dark-eyed magenta flowers that are set off by chartreuse leaves. Even better, though, is the way it weaves its way through neighboring plants, creating fabulous plant combinations with little effort.

'Dark Reiter', a fairly new cultivar, has a short mounded habit and dissected dark leaves. Bright lilac-blue blossoms appear in spring, and trimming the plant back after flowering encourages more blooms in fall and helps maintain its neat habit. 'Dark Reiter' is slow growing, making it perfect for a rock garden. Like many other geraniums, it does not appeal to deer. Pair silver-toned foliage plants with 'Dark Reiter' for a stunning effect. -Teresa Smith, Regional Picks: Northeast, Fine Gardening issue #120

Deeply cut plum-purple leaves emerge in spring and stay true to color throughout the season. Lavender-blue flowers bloom beginning in late spring. 'Midnight Reiter' grows to only about 6 or 8 inches tall and twice as wide. More shade causes the foliage to be greener.

A glad for people who would normally never grow them, 'Atom' is about half the size of regular varieties, growing to at most 3 feet tall. This 1946 classic blends easily into perennial borders, and it won't get lost because its flowers are blazing red cooled by a thin, silvery edge.

This 3-foot-tall, small-flowered perennial glad was originally collected from an abandoned home site in North Carolina. Pure yellow with a wildflowery grace, it seems to be a form of a wild South African glad introduced about 1900 as Gladiolus primulinus.

Introduced in 1940, 'Dauntless' grows to 4 feet tall and has pale pink flowers with deep pink/red throats.

This 3- to 4-foot-tall glad has luminous deep purplish-rose flowers. It dates from 1959 and is called 'Fidelio' after Beethoven's joyous opera.

These vigorous perennials have linear leaves to 24 inches long. Spikes of up to 20 funnel-shaped, marked, deep magenta flowers appear in spring.

A bushy, hairy-leaved annual, globe amaranth bears round purple flower bracts on thick stems in summer and early fall. This plant is useful as summer bedding or in a border or cutting garden. It is fairly drought tolerant and very heat tolerant. It grows to about 2 feet tall.

An upright, bushy annual with flowers (actually bracts) that resemble bright red strawberries with tiny yellow "seeds." Flowers are produced from summer to early fall and are great for cutting and drying. Leaves are hairy. Gomphrena is fairly drought tolerant and very heat tolerant. Use as bedding, in a border, or in a cut flower garden.

(1 user review)

This stunning shrub blooms all year in some climates. A fast grower, its large, moonlight-colored flowers and finely divided, gray foliage are a must for any southern-temperate garden. Frost and drought tolerant once established, it attracts bees and hummingbirds and makes an excellent screening shrub.

Pale pink flowers pop up suddenly after a summer rainstorm and resemble small amaryllis flowers on this native of Brazil. In the proper conditions, they can multiply rapidly and carpet the garden.

Through the fall and into winter, pincushion hakea provides beautiful cut flowers for the holidays; the foliage and seedpods are also great for arrangements. You can prune it into a bushy shape or a slender, small tree. As a member of the Protea family, pincushion hakea does not like phosphorus fertilizer, and like most Australian plants, it prefers to be well mulched so that its specialized roots can extract nutrients from the mulch layer.

There are few better winter displays than the blossoms of 'Pallida' witch hazel. Bright green leaves line its flaring branches in spring and summer. After a display of yellow fall color, the plant shows its distinctive branch structure. Around the end of December, clusters of buds begin to open into spidery, pale yellow flowers. These cover the branches until early March, giving off a rich, fruity perfume. This small tree or large shrub grows up to 12 feet tall and wide.

Sneezeweed is a clump-forming perennial with sturdy, branching stems and mid-green leaves. In August and September, masses of 2-inch, daisy-like yellow flowers are borne in large, loose terminal clusters on leafy 4- to 5-foot tall stems.