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.
Vervain gives airy purple spikes and nonstop pollinators with little fuss. Learn to grow blue vervain and tall verbena and tame their eager self-seeding.
The buttercup flower is both a cheerful garden bloom and a stubborn weed. Learn the species, grow the ornamental kinds, control creeping buttercup, and stay safe.
The sweet gum tree dazzles with fall color but drops spiky gumballs and heaves surface roots. Here is how to identify, plant, and care for one, plus seedless cultivars that skip the mess.
Rainbow eucalyptus turns heads with its painted, multicolored bark, but this giant tropical tree needs zones 10-11, full sun, and lots of room to thrive.
Wax myrtle is a tough, fast-growing native evergreen for screens and hedges. Learn how to plant, space, prune, and get berries from this salt-tolerant shrub.
A locust tree gives fast shade on tough soil, but black locust and honey locust differ a lot. Learn to tell them apart and which thornless cultivars to plant.
Rose hips are the fruit your rose makes after blooms fade, but deadheading cuts them off. Learn which roses set the best hips and how to harvest and use them.
The rue plant brings tough, blue-green foliage to hot, dry beds, but its phototoxic sap demands care. Here is how to grow Ruta graveolens safely.
Tickseed (coreopsis) is a drought-tolerant native that blooms all summer in full sun. Learn to sort annual from perennial types, plus deadheading tips.
A sugar maple tree rewards you with brilliant fall color and syrup, but only on the right site. Learn how to plant, water, and care for Acer saccharum.
Cherry laurel makes a fast, glossy evergreen privacy hedge, but it grows large and is poisonous. Learn to plant, prune, and choose the right one.
Stonecrop is the toughest perennial for hot, lean, dry spots, but tall types flop and roots rot when you treat it too kindly. Here is how to grow it right.