Korean velvet grass (Zoysia tenuifolia) is an extremely fine-textured, warm-season turfgrass native to East Asia, prized as a low, almost mossy 'no-mow' lawn alternative and groundcover. Left unmown it knits into a dense, undulating carpet of tiny needle-fine blades that mounds and ripples like green velvet — the look that earns its other names, 'temple grass' and 'Mascarene grass.' It is slow to establish but, once knit in, dense and surprisingly traffic-tolerant. Two honest caveats keep it from being a carefree choice: it spreads aggressively by surface stolons (runners) and will creep into beds and over a neighbor's edge unless contained by hard edging, and like all zoysias it is a warm-season grass that turns straw-brown and goes dormant through cool weather — it is NOT evergreen in winter. Its taxonomy is also muddled: many authorities treat Zoysia tenuifolia as a synonym of Zoysia matrella or Zoysia pacifica, so it travels under several names in the trade.

A Pacific Northwest evergreen fern with dark-green leathery fronds reaching 3-5 feet long — among the most iconic Pacific Northwest understory plants. Long-lived (decades), shade-tolerant, and one of the most reliable evergreen ferns for cool moist climates.

A low North American native prairie perennial whose nodding, reddish-pink to purplish globular flowers in spring are upstaged by what follows: as the seeds form, the styles elongate into upright, feathery gray plumes that collectively read like wisps of smoke — the source of its many regional names (prairie smoke, old man's whiskers, long-plumed purple avens). A soft, hairy plant to about 16 inches with fern-like, pinnately divided leaves; it spreads slowly by rhizomes into a low groundcover and prefers cool-summer climates and dry, well-drained soil.

A large multi-stemmed native shrub-to-small-tree of western North America, named for the dusty powder-blue drupes that ripen in late summer over a waxy bloom. Flat-topped creamy-white flower cymes up to 10 inches across rise above pinnately compound serrated foliage in early summer, drawing birds and butterflies. The cooked fruit is edible and prized for jelly, pie, and wine, but the plant earns a "high maintenance" note for suckering, wind/snow breakage, and a roster of fungal and insect pests.

A suckering, thicket-forming native cherry that reads as a large shrub or small tree across most of North America. Fragrant white flowers open in elongated drooping racemes in spring, followed by dense pendulous clusters of pea-sized cherries that ripen red to dark purple-black in late summer. The astringent fruit is technically edible after processing, and the plant is a workhorse for wildlife — feeding birds and mammals and hosting sphinx-moth larvae.

An upright, multi-stemmed, rhizomatous deciduous shrub of the western U.S. and Canada, named for its showy, fragrant yellow-to-orange spring flowers. Glossy lobed leaves turn reddish-purple in fall, and the spring bloom gives way to edible black currants by mid to late summer. Tough and adaptable — it tolerates dry to seasonally flooded soils, poor and clay soils, drought, and erosion, and the flowers and fruit feed hummingbirds, butterflies, and birds.