Profiles Index

Bleeding Heart Plants (Dicentra) - Growing Flowering Bleeding Heart in the Garde
Bleeding Heart plants (Dicentra) are spring blooming flowers for a shady part of the garden. Bleeding Hearts are perennial plants with heart shaped pink or white flowers with a tear shaped drop at the bottom. Bleeding Heart can be grown in many areas and will self-sow in cooler climates. Bleeding Heart plants combine beautifully with other spring blooming flowers.

Lamb's Ears - Growing These Soft, Fuzzy Garden Favorites
Lamb's Ears are popular in gardens because of their soft, inviting texture. They are very easy to grow almost anywhere. This profile of Lamb's Ears, Stachys byzantina, gives you their preferences and recommends varieties for your garden.

Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ - Growing Golden Japanese Forest Grass
With arching gold leaves, striped with bright green, Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' is a unique ornamental grass. But it's a clump forming grass that grows excruciatingly slowly. It will just sit there for a couple of years and only come into its own after about 5 years. It’s worth the expense to get a slightly larger plant. Here's how to get yours growing.

Ornamental Cabbage and Flowering Kale - Pretty Enough to Eat?
Ornamental cabbage and flowering kale are in the same species, Brassica oleracea, as edible cabbages and kale. Although they are still edible, they aren’t as tasty and tender as their cousins. But they're as easy to grow, as shown here.

Prickly Pear - Growing the Hardy Cactus Opuntia compressa - Eastern Prickly Pear
What’s more surprising, that a cactus is hardy enough to grow in USDA Zone 4 or that it should have such a pretty flower? Eastern prickly pear doesn’t have the stature of it’s dessert cousin, the larger prickly pear, Opuntia ficus-indica, which can top 15'. Bbut this smaller prickly pear adds a touch of the mid-west to cooler climates and makes up for its diminutive size with its hardiness. And being a cactus, prickly pear is incredibly easy to grow.

Obedient Plant
Obedient Plant (Physostegia virginiana) got its common name because you can bend the individual flowers in any direction you like - a nice feature for floral displays. Unfortunately obedient plants are not so obedient in the garden, where some varieties can spread to the point of nuisance. However, obedient plant provides a nice splash of pale colors in the fall garden and growing obedient plant is easy.

Echinacea - Coneflowers are Garden Favorites
Echinacea profile. Echinacea or coneflower is an old fashioned prairie plant. Echinacea are hardy, adaptable and reliable repeat bloomers and are expecially popular with gardeners for good reason.

Achillea - Growing Yarrow in the Perennial Garden
Achillea often get taken for granted because they are such a dependable, low maintenance perennial plant. There are many varieties of Yarrow and there is sure to be one or two suited to growing in your garden.

Growing Cannas - Dramatic, Tropical Perennials for Any Flower Garden
Cannas are tropical and subtropical flowering plants with large, banana like leaves. Cannas can be grown as annuals in cooler regions, where they add an instant touch of the tropics to flower gardens. Easy care and dramatic effect make planting cannas worthwhile for any garden border. They can even be grown in pots and

Solomon's Seal - Growing the Elegant Shade Perennial Polygonatum
Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum) is an elegant Native American woodland plant. The small, tubular white flowers of Polygonatum dangle underneath the leaves. But it's the plant form that makes Solomon's Seal such an interesting plant. Once established, Polygonatum slowly spreads out and creates a nodding blanket of foliage that turns a golden yellow in autumn. Here are some tips on getting Solomon’s Seal to grow in your garden.

Primula - The Primrose is No Shy Wallflower
Primroses are unusually vivid spring blooming perennial flowers. Unlike the subtle pastels associated with spring, primroses shout out in bold yellows, reds, pinks and blues, making them ideal for brightening the spring garden. Primroses look their best in mass. These easy care perennials are profiled here.

Rudbeckia - Choosing and Growing Black-Eyed Susans
Rudbeckia are easy to establish, naturalize well and require little maintenance other than deadheading. Black-eyed Susan's come in a rich array of yellows, golds, oranges and russets. For a dependable, long season bloomer that brings a smile to faces, you can’t go wrong with Rudbeckia. Here are some tips for choosing and growing Black-eyed Susans, Brown-eyed Susans and all the Gloriosa Daisies in between.

Phormium - Growing the Spiky, Spectacular New Zealand Flax
Phormium is a spiky, sword-leafed evergreen perennial that is used as a garden focal point or specimen plant. Some are small enough to use in containers, others can reach several feet in diameter and 7+ feet tall. Phormium aren’t hardy in many areas, but can be brought indoors for the winter. Growing Phormium is easy, if you give the plants what they want.

True Geraniums - How to Grow Hardy, Perennial Geraniums
The term geranium is confusing. The first geranium most gardeners encounter is not a geranium at all, but Pelargonium, a relative of the perennial geranium. True or hardy or perennial geraniums belong to the genus Geranium. You will sometimes see them referred to as cranesbill geraniums, because their seed pods do somewhat resemble a crane’s bill. The flowers, in shades of white, pink, magenta, purples and blues, are long blooming. As you see here, geraniums are easy care.

Astilbes - Growing and Gardening with Astilbes
Astilbes are long-blooming plume-like flowers held above airy foliage. Astilbes are one of the easiest [link url=od/perennials/g/Perennial.htm]perennial[/link] flowers to grow, but they give a high return. Virtually pest free, they can light up the shade garden.

Peonies - Old Fashioned, Fragrant Perennials
Peonies are prennial stars of the spring garden. Grown in a mass planting, they can be a garden anchor. Peonies are beautiful, often fragrant, clump forming perennials with large cupped or ruffled showy flowers.

Chinese Foxgloves (Rehmannia elata)
The common name of the perennial flower Rehmannia is Chinese Foxgloves, because the tubular flowers bear a resemblance to Digitalis. They do well in shade, even dry shade. And these foxgloves, although not as hardy as digitalis, are repeat blooming throughout the growing season.

Pulmonaria - Springtime Charmers in the Perennial Flower Border
Pulmonaria, or Lungwort, is far more charming than its name would imply. Blooming when few other perennials have even emerged after winter, Pulmoniaria offers distintive speckled and splashed foliage and small, but profuse and vivid flowers in blues, pinks, corals and whites. There is a Pulmonaria for almost any garden and they are profiled here.

Growing Sedum - Showy Stonecrop is an Easy, Carefree Perennial Performer
Border Sedum or Showy Stonecrop is a must for every perennial garden. The sturdy stems, succulent leaves and clusters of flower buds are attractive all season and light up a fall garden. Growing Sedum is easy; almost mistake proof. There are Sedum varieties to blend with every color scheme and trailing Sedum to fill container gardens. Here are some tips for growing great Sedum.

Coreopsis - Using Coreopsis in the Flower Garden
Coreopsis are sunny flower border work horses. They are great additions to any garden design, blooming most of the summer. Coreopsis make great garden edging as well as nice cut flowers.

Catmints (Nepeta) are Easy Growing, Drought Hardy Garden Performers
Catmint (Nepeta) is extremely hardy, drought tolerant and virtually maintenance free. All this and nepeta repeat blooms sporadically throughout the summer. Such a wonderful garden plant should be more widely appreciated and used by gardeners. Take another look here, at the pleasure of growing nepeta and its usefulness in any garden design.

Caladiums - Tropical Perennials to Light Up Every Shade Garden
Caladiums are tropical perennials grown for their spectacularly colorful foliage. Who needs flowers when the leaves are splotched and speckled with rose, cream, burgundy and flame red? Caladiums are heat lovers, but they can easily grow in cooler climates in summer and even make great houseplants. Learn the in and outs for caring for your colorful Caladiums.

Growing Hardy Mums - Chrysanthemums to Take Your Garden Out in Style
Mums are grown in just about every fall garden. Too often mums are an impulse buy at the nursery, when already in bloom late in the season. Chrysanthemums can actually be hardy perennials in most gardening zones, if planted early enough to become established. Mums are easy growing plants that will bloom as other plants fade, if pinched during the growing season. There are many more varieties of mums than you’ve probably seen, all worth taking a look.

Growing Alliums - Ornamental Onions
Allium bulbs may resemple onions, but it's the flowers you are after with these ornamental varieties. Alliums are easy to grow and undemanding as this profile shows.

Hellebores - Growing Perennial Hellebores in the Garden
More and more species of Hellebores are available in garden centers and catalogs. The Christmas Rose, the Lenten Rose and the Stinking Rose are all relatively easy care perennials for your winter and spring garden.