European columbine

A drought-hardy western-native subshrub (long known as Zauschneria) that lights up dry, rocky ground with scarlet tubular flowers from midsummer until frost - exactly when migrating and resident hummingbirds need a late-season nectar source. Slender, highly-branched stems carry small grey-green lance-shaped leaves; the whole plant thrives on full sun, lean soil, and very little water once established.

A spring-blooming native bulb of the moist meadows of the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies, common camas sends up a 2-3 foot scape lined with dozens of star-shaped blue-violet florets that open from the bottom up over basal grass-like leaves. It is the camas whose bulb was a staple food of Indigenous peoples across its range - the genus name comes from the Native American "kamas"/"quamash". The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as a plant of special value to native bees.

A tough, clump-forming herbaceous perennial whose common name comes from its bloom habit - each flower opens for a single day, but a well-budded scape opens fresh blooms in succession over weeks. Modern garden daylilies are overwhelmingly hybrids, with more than 60,000 cultivars registered, in nearly every color but true blue. Full-size classics like 'Hyperion' carry fragrant, 4-inch flowers on naked scapes rising to about 3 feet above arching, blade-like foliage; the plants tolerate rabbits, erosion, and urban conditions and ask very little once established.

Field scabious (Knautia arvensis) is one of the very best meadow and pollinator perennials: an airy, long-flowering native of European grasslands that carries domed, pincushion-like flowerheads of soft lilac-blue to mauve on slender, branching, wiry stems from summer well into autumn. It grows from a basal rosette and weaves an informal, see-through veil through a wildflower meadow or relaxed border, alive with bees, butterflies, and hoverflies. POWO (Kew) records it as native across Europe and into western Asia, and it is an important forage plant for some declining wild bees in its native range. RHS lists Knautia arvensis as a hardy wildflower-meadow perennial for pollinators and rates it fully hardy (H7) - note that it is its garden relative Knautia macedonica, not this species, that holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit. The honest caveats matter: it self-seeds freely and naturalises in rough grass and meadows (lovely there, but it can look untidy or flop in a tidy formal border, where it is better given support or a relaxed setting). It is drought-tolerant once established and thrives in poor, well-drained, even chalky soil - and it is grown purely as an ornamental, with no edible use.

A dry-country wildflower of the Intermountain West whose narrow, scarlet, tubular flowers line a slender stalk that rises about 3 feet above a low rosette of glaucous blue-green leaves. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center documents it blooming red from May into August on dry, gravelly soils, and it is one of the classic hummingbird-pollinated penstemons. Deeply drought-tolerant once established - best on lean, well-drained ground where it is not over-watered.

A clump-forming herbaceous perennial in the mint family (Lamiaceae), native to Europe and west-central Asia. NC State Extension describes an erect, multi-stemmed plant about 1.5 to 3 feet tall and up to 24 inches wide, with wrinkled, toothed, gray-green aromatic leaves and dense spike-like clusters of lavender to violet-blue flowers (some cultivars pink) from June to September. It blooms in flushes - cutting spent stems back to the basal leaves brings a fresh round of flowers - and is drought tolerant, deer- and rabbit-resistant, and a magnet for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. A reliable, low-maintenance workhorse for sunny borders and pollinator plantings.