Featured Plants

She's the belle of the ball! Sweetly scented with blooms of blush pink, Asclepias incarnata 'Cinderella' from Walter's Gardens lasts longer in your garden than her namesake. A perennial with beauty, grace, and staying power, this wetland native does well in average garden conditions and is a pollinator favorite!

A tall and lovely prairie native with long spikes of pure white flowers from May to Mid-June.  Easy and long-lived, it is native from New York to Minnesota, Texas to Mississippi.

Bright white flowers are larger and showier than the species. It is a longer-lived and better smelling substitute for baby's breath! June-October bloom in an average to dry location.

Airy plumes with numerous small, barely blue flowers over mint-scented, oregano-like foliage from June to October. Great in rock walls. It does need good drainage. It looks like a small, light blue Heuchera when in flower, which seems like all the time. 2021 Perennial Plant of the Year by the Perennial Plant Association. 

A perennial garden favorite, Dendranthema x grandiflorum ‘Hillside Pink Sheffield’ is a late-blooming classic. Covered in single, apricot daisy flowers with egg yolk golden centers, this garden mum attracts late-season pollinators. 

Epimedium 'Purple Pixie' caught our notice with its distinct purple blooms with contrasting white spurs emerging in early spring. The deepest purple selection available on the market, it's also notable for its ability to reach its mature size quickly without becoming aggressive. A perfect addition to the shade garden, the green foliage is streaked with burgundy all season long.

Looking for an easy, low-maintenance, long-lived groundcover for shade? Look no further! This Epimedium x rubrum has delicate, heart-shaped leaves that emerge red in spring, become lush green in summer, and have lovely fall color. The blooms are light and airy red and light yellow blooming in early spring. Great for moist shade locations but tolerates dry shade once established!

Add a little brightness to your dreary early spring day! Epimedium × versicolor ‘Sulphureum’ has pale yellow short-spurred flowers emerging in early spring that hang delicately above heart-shaped foliage. Leaves emerge a soft red, mature to a verdant green, and change color again in the fall. Excellent groundcover in dry shade, this plant spreads quickly to keep weeds at bay while filling the niche of what to plant near a garden path perfectly. 

A soft dusting of white flowers hovers on racemes above heart-shaped foliage emerging bronze in spring. Epimedium × youngianum ‘Niveum’ is a compact and slower-growing barrenwort, perfect to grow around tree roots, along path edges, or in naturalised areas as a well-behaved dry shade groundcover. 

Spotted joe-pye weed grows 4-7 feet tall with mauve-pink flowers blooming in late summer to early fall. A native perennial, Eupatorium maculatum attracts swallowtail butterflies and lives happily in sunny, wet soils. 

Eupatorium Euphoria™ Ruby is a compact, early-flowering variety of the classic summer flowering native perennial. It's small size makes it perfect for growers and homeowners alike while it's early-flowering is a delight to pollinators. This is Darwin Perennial's answer to the age-old customer question in garden centers - "I like this, but do you have something that grows smaller?"

Easily flowing through the landscape, this grass softens the garden with its gracefully arching blades as they drift between plantings. The soft vibrant green of this species indigenous to the mountains of Japan lends tranquility to your plantings – especially impactful in large masses under limbed-up deciduous trees.

Helleborus 'Emma' is an early flowering hellebore with beautiful large white flowers that age to a mauve pink. Very floriferous from December to May on a neat habit of dark green foliage with a lighter green veining. -Ashwood Nurseries

Helleborus ViV 'Victoria' is part of the Joie de Vivre Collection from noted breeder Belgian Helleborus specialist Het Wilgenbroek. 'Victoria' is a very durable and long-blooming cultivar with masses of purple flowers blooming from September through till spring. 

Heuchera 'Green Spice' spices up the shade garden! With dark red venation in spring transition to cool greens and silver in the summer, it wraps up it's foliage show with oranges and rust colors in fall! This groundcover is a perfect way to brighten up dull spots, to edge along a garden path, or to intermingle with other interesting textures to liven things up. 

A beautiful display when used en masse, the long flowering stems of this alumroot sway high above deep green foliage mottled in silver highlights. Tubular calyces surround the pale yellow flowers and securely affix them to upright stems. Expect flowering from late May into June.

Plainly stated, it’s a show stopper. Beyond other Iris selections on the market, ‘Purple Flame’ has a richer, more intense cast to stems and flowers, yes. However, the true beauty lies in the irresistible foliage. Emerging in March, the purple flame-like foliage provides an unparalleled performance of vivid and intense eggplant purple foliage followed by an encore of rich and abundant flowers. 

From Peace Tree Farm comes the next generation of Lavender - Lavender 'Sensational!' What makes it different from 'Phenomenal'? With large, thick flowers and sturdy stems, this lavender has a dense silver habit and great branching. The flowers are packed with that trademark lavender scent with low camphor notes. Peace Tree has improved its heat and humidity tolerance, as well as its cold tolerance, making this plant a great addition to a wider range of gardens!

The short stature, continuous sunny bloom, and deep wine coloring of this native plant make Lysimachia lanceolata a new favorite groundcover, winning over our R&D Department by how it keeps weeds at bay and is a carefree plant. 

'Gardenview Scarlet' is one of the most mildew resistant Monarda varieties available. A classic variety that is well-earned, it's rose-red flowers sit on stems rising to 3' tall. Blooming from June to August, this long-flowering Monarda is beautiful, especially when massed in drifts to attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. 

A free-blooming Nepeta that lives up to its namesake—it is summer magic! Blooming all season long on upright stems that never flop, even in the worst of storms, this plant was on RHS Chelsea Flower show’s Short List in 2013. Great for layering in the garden, placed in a container, or along a flower border. We admire its ability to ‘keep it fresh’ even in the heat and humidity of summer as other Nepeta varieties tend to fade.

Phlox carolina ssp. carolina ‘Kim’ is a fantastic selection that was discovered by Jan Midgley in Alabama. It performs much better than any other cultivar of Carolina phlox in our trial. What sets ‘Kim’ apart from other members of the species is its lush and vigorous habit (2’ tall) that remains sturdy and disease-free all season long. The leaves are also a lighter shade of green, almost lime-colored, which can prolong its horticultural interest in the garden. However, the most impressive feature of ‘Kim’ is its show-stopping light pink flowers which blanket the plant from late May through early June. Mt. Cuba Center

A new introduction from Brent Horvath of Intrinsic Perennials, this Rudbeckia is covered in blooms on a domed and shorter version of a black-eyed Susan. It is perfect planted in masses or in the perennial border and it hides spent blooms to provide uniform color as it blooms for weeks on end. Due to its thinner, hairier leaves, it is found to be resistant to septoria leaf spot.

While there may be a bounty of black-eyed susan on the market, what makes Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii a dream is its ability to wrap strength, beauty, disease and pest resistance all into one neat package. This variety won the prestigious Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society in 1993 and if you grow it, you'll soon understand why!

Rudbeckia triloba 'Prairie Glow' has our attention! With brightly colored flowers of yellow with a bright red eye fading to a glowing orange to bronze, this native beauty brings fire to the sunny border. It's multi-branching habit provides dense flower cover, more so than the straight species, and it's late blooming time, starting in July and flowering right through to October, makes this a valuable pollinator plant. 

Salvia nemorosa 'Rose Marvel' PP30118 has the largest flowers of any rose or pink Salvia nemorosa on the market. Enjoy the stunning display of color in Spring and Summer.

An early blooming, petite Salvia! Blooming a month earlier than the popular 'May Night', Salvia 'April Night' provides lush violet-blue blooms from spring to summer. 

An underused but widely requested native warm-season grass, Schizachyrium littorale is a bushier version of the popular little bluestem, growing 2' tall. What makes it really notable are the seedheads which are featherier and stay on the stem well into the winter. We predict this dune bluestem to become a popular favorite in everything from dune restoration projects to coastal landscaping to low-maintenance high-exposure urban sites. 

A North Creek discovery sure to give a brilliant performance in the landscape, worthy of applause.  It keeps a tight, upright habit throughout the entire season and has stood strong even in the rich soils of our trial gardens. A warm season grass that does well in poor, dry soils.  Spikey bluish-green stems and leaves transition to a sizzling display of oranges, reds, yellows, and purplish-browns in the autumn.  Also provides winter interest before cutting back in early spring to make way for new growth.

Sedum aizoon 'Euphorbioides' is a striking specimen, featuring strong, upright, red stems and green leaves that are serrated along the edges. Large yellow flower heads appear in midsummer. Flowers attract pollinators. Vastly underused in the industry, Sedum aizoon ‘Euphorbioides’ is one of the more interesting plants suitable for extensive green roof conditions. -Green Roof Plants

Soft blue star shaped flowers with gold centers rise above fine, semievergreen, Iris-like foliage from May to June. Excellent for edging, the 3/4" flowers are very good sized for the genus. A strong floral show without seeding around and a tidier habit with more flower power than the straight species.

Solidago flexicaulis brings pollinators to your dappled shade areas with a subtle yellow flower clusters in mid-summer to fall. A hardy native perennial, it tolerates deer, shade, and clay soils.

Brand new! We have had Golden Sunset™ indiangrass in our trials for a couple of years and couldn't believe how well it performed. Early flowering with gorgeous golden flower plumes, this Sorghastrum nutans selection from University of Minnesota produces hundreds of flowering stems to create a real show in the fall. It also has a very upright habit that does not lodge or fall over like the straight species tends to do. 

The most diminutive of hybrid ironweeds available on the market, ‘Summer’s Swan Song’ is a selection from our friend Jim Ault at Chicago Botanic Garden. The foliage is olive green with a purple tinge on wine red stems and covered in deep purple flowers from early to mid-autumn. Attention-grabbing at CBG’s Vernonia trials, the long flowering branches interlock to hold the stems upright on the blusteriest of days.

Vernonia ‘Summer’s Surrender’ is a unique plant. What makes it so? Bushy, dark olive-green foliage, disease resistance, and a distinct shrub-like form that grows wider than tall, 'Summer's Surrender' is an easy choice to submit. It doesn't lodge like other cultivars and is covered in airy purple clusters through late summer into fall.