The plants that come back. Herbaceous perennials rise from the crown each spring, flower through the warm months, and retreat to the ground in winter, returning larger the year after. They are the flowering heart of the border, the long-term investment that repays a gardener season after season.
Liatris spicata, the blazing star or gayfeather, sends up rockets of feathery purple in the heart of summer, one of the great vertical accents of the North American prairie. The species is native to the moist meadows, prairies, and wet savannas of eastern North America, where the flower spikes once rose in their thousands among the tall grasses. Set against those horizontal sweeps of grass, the erect, bottlebrush spikes give any planting a jolt of structure and color.
Hardiness
Zones 3–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
2–4 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
immune support, respiratory support, detoxification & cleansing, digestive health
Few native perennials burn as bright as Lobelia cardinalis, the cardinal flower, whose late-summer spikes of pure, velvety scarlet stop traffic in any garden. The species ranges across much of North America along stream banks, wet meadows, and ditches, and takes the common name from the vivid red of a cardinal's robes. From a low rosette of broad green leaves rises a stiff, unbranched stem hung with tubular flowers built, as luck would have it, precisely to the reach of a hummingbird's bill.
Where the cardinal flower runs to scarlet, Lobelia siphilitica answers in blue. The great blue lobelia sends up leafy spikes packed with inch-long, two-lipped flowers of clear, saturated blue in late summer and early fall, one of the truest blues in the native flora and a gift to the garden at a tired time of year. The species grows wild across eastern and central North America in moist meadows, low woods, and along streamsides.
'Jacob Cline' is the beebalm to beat for sheer red, a native perennial that throws big, deep-crimson flowerheads on tall stems through the heart of summer. The whorled, tubular blooms sit atop four to five feet of square, mint-family stems, and they pull in hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies with a persistence few perennials match; in one major trial 'Jacob Cline' was the single best beebalm for hummingbirds.
Monarda fistulosa, wild bergamot, is one of the great native perennials of the North American prairie, a hardy, aromatic member of the mint family loved for showy heads of lavender-pink and for a fragrance like oregano crossed with mint. The species grows wild in meadows, prairies, and open woods across most of the continent, and brings both vivid summer color and a deep well of history to the garden.
Sundrops make a gentle joke of their family. Oenothera fruticosa ssp. glauca belongs to the evening primroses, a tribe famous for opening at dusk and closing by mid-morning, yet the sundrops break ranks and bloom by day, holding cups of clear, satiny yellow wide open through the sunlit hours of late spring and early summer. The genus name comes from the Greek oinos, wine, and thera, to hunt or seek, an old and disputed reference to a European relative whose roots were once thought to give a taste for wine; the epithet fruticosa means shrubby, for the firm, upright stems, and glauca notes the blue-green bloom on the foliage.
Patrinia scabiosifolia 'Nagoya' is a tough, upright perennial from the meadows and grassy hills of East Asia, grown for airy, flat-topped heads of tiny golden-yellow flowers held high on wiry, branching stems. The species name scabiosifolia points to the deeply lobed basal leaves, which recall those of a scabious, and the whole plant reads as a chartreuse-gold answer to Queen Anne's lace, lending height and a see-through veil to a summer border. In Japan the species is one of the classic seven flowers of autumn, and 'Nagoya' is a garden selection prized for reliable, compact performance.
Patrinia villosa is a good perennial for warm climates, introduced to American gardens by Heronswood Nursery, and the appeal is easy to miss in a catalog photograph and obvious in a border. Broad flat clusters of small white flowers are held well clear of the foliage on wiry stems through summer, giving the effect of a white lace-cap floating above the planting rather than sitting in it. The basal leaves are coarsely toothed, ovate to rhomboid, and covered in the short white hairs that give the species its epithet. Plants run gently at the root, so a single crown widens into a colony over a few seasons without ever becoming a nuisance.
This rare Penstemon is a very attractive perennial with deeply cut, fern-like leaves and tall spikes of pinkish-violet flowers, each two-lipped tube carrying the yellow-bearded sterile stamen that gives the genus the name beardtongue. The dissected foliage is not merely a nice feature; it is unique in the entire genus, and no other Penstemon anywhere in the world has leaves like these. Bloom comes in late spring on stems of a foot to two, held well above a low basal clump.
Small's beardtongue is one of the showiest and most obliging of the eastern native penstemons, a Southern Appalachian wildflower that carries tall spires of lavender-pink to rosy-purple tubular flowers in late spring and holds them for weeks. Each bloom is pale-throated and finely striped inside, a landing-strip for the bumblebees that work the flowers, and the whole plant rises from a handsome rosette of purple-veined foliage on reddish stems.
Phlox carolina 'Kim' is among the best of the Carolina phloxes, a selection found by the plantswoman Jan Midgley in Alabama and grown ever since for good health and honest flower power. From a low, tidy clump of narrow, almost lime-green leaves rise sturdy stems eighteen to twenty-four inches tall, each carrying an open, airy cluster of pale to bright pink flowers, five petals apiece, hovering just above the foliage from late spring into early summer. Where the border phloxes so often finish the season spotted and tired, 'Kim' holds clean, fresh foliage from spring straight through fall.
Wild blue phlox turned up in the Woodlanders catalog almost by insisting on it, growing in the woods around Aiken the way the plant has for as long as anyone can remember. We have watched these colonies for years, and taking this long to offer them is either a comment on our patience or on our woody bias. Possibly both.
'Shortwood' is one of the best of the tall garden phloxes, a strong pink that stands up straight and blooms for weeks in the heart of summer. Each large, domed panicle is packed with fragrant flowers, clear rose-pink around a deeper magenta eye, and the whole plant reads from across the garden, four feet of upright color that never seems to flop.
Phlox pilosa, the downy or prairie phlox, is a native of open woods, prairies, and glades across much of the eastern and central United States, and 'Eco Happy Traveler' is one of the most rewarding garden selections, made for a spreading habit and a long run of clear rose-pink bloom. The soft, downy stems and narrow leaves give the plant the common name, and the whole low mat is topped in late spring by loose clusters of fragrant, five-petaled flowers.
Physostegia virginiana, the obedient plant, is a familiar native of moist meadows and streamsides across eastern North America, and 'Vivid' is the compact, richly colored selection that has become a garden standard. Upright spikes of deep rose-pink, tubular flowers rise on square, mint-family stems in mid to late summer, holding strong color into early fall when much of the border is fading.
A spring-blooming native of the eastern woodlands, found from Ontario and Quebec south through the Appalachians and as far west as Minnesota and Oklahoma, growing on rich deciduous forest floors, along streambanks, and at the bases of sandstone canyons. Polemonium reptans is one of those native plants that rewards close attention. The leaves are pinnately compound, with seven to twenty-one paired leaflets running up each stem like the rungs of a ladder, the source of the common name, which gestures all the way back to the biblical Jacob and his dream of a stairway to heaven. The genus name is older still: Polemonium honors King Polemon of Pontus, an ancient Greek ruler with a side interest in herbalism.
Hardiness
Zones 3–8
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
1–2 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
Blue
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, detoxification & cleansing, topical applications, general wellness
Polygonatum commutatum, the great or giant Solomon's seal, is a bold native perennial of the eastern North American woodlands, sending up tall, unbranched, gracefully arching stems clad in broad, oval, alternate leaves. From the leaf axils along the underside of each stem hang small, creamy-white, bell-shaped flowers, usually in pairs, in late spring and early summer.
Hardiness
Zones 3–8
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
3–5 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
pain relief, digestive health, respiratory support, general wellness
Polygonatum odoratum 'Variegatum', the variegated Solomon's seal, is one of the most graceful of all shade perennials, an Old World cousin of the native Solomon's seals grown for luminous, cream-edged foliage on arching stems. Each lance-shaped leaf carries a soft green center rimmed and streaked in creamy white, and the new stems flush a warm rose before greening.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
1–2 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, pain relief, digestive health, general wellness
Where blunt mountain mint is all broad silver, Pycnanthemum tenuifolium is the slender cousin, a fine-textured native built from wiry stems and narrow, almost needle-thin leaves. From midsummer into early fall the plant clouds over with flat-topped clusters of tiny white to pale lavender flowers, faintly purple-speckled, and the effect at a distance is a low haze of bloom. What the flowers lack in size they make up in draw: bees, small butterflies, wasps, and beneficial insects work the nectar in numbers that make narrowleaf mountain mint one of the most valuable pollinator plants of the eastern flora.
Hardiness
Zones 6–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
2–3 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
digestive health, general wellness, topical applications
Rohdea japonica, the sacred lily or Nippon lily, is a bold, slow, tufted evergreen perennial grown above all for foliage, and this selection carries the darkest leaves of all, an almost black, glossy green that anchors a shaded planting through the whole year and lights up a winter landscape when little else holds. Rather sizeable red berries ripen in tight clusters, half-hidden at the base of the leaves, a quiet second season for anyone who looks closely.
