Browse Plants

(1 user review)

With their white margins and mottling, the jagged leaves of 'Tasmanian Angel' are a real showshopper, and in late summer, 3-foot-tall, pink-and-cream flower stalks heighten the effect. The variegation may be less pronounced as the leaves age, but the plant still draws the eye. Use it as a multiseason container specimen or as a bedding plant. -Allan Armitage, Plants to know and grow, Fine Gardening issue #119

(1 user review)

This 3-foot-tall and 2-foot-wide clumping perennial displays spiky racemes of white flowers in late spring and early summer followed by bright white berries with dark tips on bright red stalks. The berries are exceptionally showy and especially effective in shady woodland beds.

Actaea racemosa is a native woodland perennial with white, somewhat fuzzy flowers in midsummer that wave above astilbe-like, deeply cut foliage. The flowers can be unpleasantly scented, thus the name "bugbane." Formerly in the genus Cimicifuga, this plant is great for use in a woodland garden or moist border.

(1 user review)

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.

(3 user reviews)

This clumping woodland perennial with deep green foliage up to 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide bears spikes of  fragrant white flowers 1 to 2 feet long in fall. Cultivars exist with varying leaf colors and forms.

(1 user review)

This chocolate-leaved cultivar up to 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide bears compact spikes of white flowers in late summer. This plant may languish in very warm temperatures. The flowers remain ornamental for three to four weeks.

Unlike other bugbanes, 'Hillside Black Beauty' offers deep purple-black foliage. From late spring to late summer, its dark hue makes a wonderful backdrop for colorful foliage and flowering shade plants. In fall, fragrant, cream-colored flowers appear on tall, wandlike stems. An added plus: this plant is deer resistant. --Michael Ruggiero, Regional Picks: Mid-Atlantic, Fine Gardening issue #127

(2 user reviews)

Elegant, lacy foliage on black stems makes this maidenhair fern a standout, even among others in the genus. In addition, when new fronds emerge in late winter or early spring, they are bright bronze-pink. Only about a foot high, Himalayan maidenhair ferns can spread by creeping rhizomes to form a sizeable colony. They also make eye-catching indoor plants and pair well with orchids.

(1 user review)

This fast spreader has dark green leaves with deep blue flowers spring to summer.

(3 user reviews)

Satiny deep green to black leaves and glowing white veins on 18-inch-long leaves make this elephant's ear great in containers, in a shady border, at the edge of a pond, or as a houseplant. It also has pale stalks with purplish banding. 'Frydek' is very tolerant of a range of soil pH, heat, humidity, and heavy soil. It can even take about a half day of sunlight.

This beautiful, vigorous, pale pink, semi-double-flowering anemone starts blooming in early July into September on 28- to 36-inch stems.

This large, single-flowered, pinkish-purple anemone blooms from August to October on stems 24 to 34 inches tall.

Anemones thrive in light to partial shade but will tolerate full sun, as long as there is sufficient moisture. Site plants in moist, humus-rich soil, but avoid overly wet conditions. Apply mulch annually in northern regions.

This beautiful, white, semi-double-flowered anemone reaches 25 to 30 inches tall. An early flowerer, ‘Whirlwind blooms from August to October.

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

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

A favorite of children, Jack-in-the-pulpit is a tuberous perennial producing one or two leaves, each divided into three narrow leaflets. But it's best known for its spring to early summer display of hooded, green spathes—Jack's pulpit—which are often striped with purple. Autumn brings clusters of densely packed, showy red berries.

(3 user reviews)

Goat's beard is a perennial native to eastern North America and parts of Europe and Siberia. It is grown for its tall stature (up to 6 feet) and showy, cream-colored plumes of flowers in summer. The effect is that of a giant astilbe. Plants with male flowers produce showier and more erect plumes than plants with female flowers, whose plumes are more pendent and less creamy-white. Grow in a woodland garden or moist border, or at waterside.