From annuals and perennials to flowering trees and shrubs, this is where your garden gets its color. Browse planting guides, bloom-time tips, and care advice for the ornamental plants that give a yard its structure, fragrance, and year-round interest.
The lily of the valley flower perfumes the spring shade garden, but it spreads fast and is poisonous. Learn how to plant, contain, and care for it.
Thinking of a linden tree but worried about sticky honeydew or dead bees? Here is how to grow, prune, and use Tilia – and the truth about silver lindens.
The lisianthus flower looks like a rose without the thorns, but most growers lose it at one stage. Here is how to grow, feed, and cut it for weeks of bloom.
Leyland cypress makes a fast privacy screen at 3-4 ft a year, but it grows huge, topples in storms, and is canker-prone. How to plant, space, and decide.
Liatris fails most often from winter-wet soil rotting its corm. Plant blazing star corms eyes-up in full sun with sharp drainage for an easy monarch magnet.
A lilac bush dazzles in spring, yet many never bloom. Learn the full-sun, well-drained, cold-winter needs and the prune-after-flowering rule that fixes it.
Lambs ear gives velvet-soft silver foliage on a drought-tolerant groundcover, but it rots in heat and wet soil. Learn the tricks that keep it thriving.
A lavender plant that rots or refuses to bloom usually needs one fix: lean fast-draining soil, full sun, and almost no water. Here is how to get it right.
Kousa dogwood is the disease-resistant alternative to native flowering dogwood, with later blooms, edible red fruit, and good fall color. How to grow it.
A kwanzan cherry tree gives you clouds of double pink spring blooms with no fruit to clean up. Learn how to plant it, when it flowers, and its main problems.
A juniper tree can be a six-inch ground cover or a 60-foot evergreen, so the wrong form means years of regret. How to identify, plant, and choose one.
A jacaranda tree dazzles with purple-blue spring blooms but can sulk for years without flowering. Learn the zones, planting, bloom triggers, and trade-offs.