Idaho fescue

Creeping cotoneaster is a deciduous spreading shrub native to the mountains of central and southwestern China, Nepal, and Taiwan, prized for its distinctive flat herringbone branching, tiny pink-white summer flowers, and masses of vivid red autumn berries that sustain birds through winter. It holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit and tolerates poor, dry soils on banks and walls where little else will perform. The honest catch is twofold: the berries are mildly toxic to humans and pets (cyanogenic seeds, GI-irritant flesh), and the plant self-seeds freely enough that it is naturalising widely in the UK and Ireland and is considered potentially invasive - a real concern before planting near wild margins or hedgerows.

An airy, see-through ornamental in the vervain family (Verbenaceae), native to South America and naturalized across the warm southeastern United States. NC State Extension describes an erect plant 2 to 5 feet tall on thin but strong red-marked green stems, topped from summer into fall by dense, flat-topped clusters of small tubular purple-lavender flowers held well above mostly basal, lance-shaped, serrated dark-green leaves. A perennial in USDA zones 7-11 (grown as an annual in colder climates), it is fast-growing, drought and deer tolerant, and a magnet for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds - though it self-sows freely and some sources have labeled it invasive.

The original black-eyed Susan - a bristly-stemmed, short-lived meadow daisy that behaves as an annual, biennial, or brief perennial depending on where it grows. It blooms hard and early from seed, then carries itself forward by reseeding rather than by spreading into a permanent clump.

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.

The first thing to settle about plains coreopsis is the thing seed racks are vaguest about: it is an ANNUAL. Missouri Botanical Garden types it that way without hedging, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center calls it an annual in its first line, and the plant germinates, flowers, sets seed and dies inside one season. That single fact separates it from the other two coreopsis in this group. Lanceleaf coreopsis and largeflower coreopsis are true perennials that gardeners routinely expect to be long-lived and that are not quite: MBG says lanceleaf needs dividing every two or three years in a border to stay robust; threadleaf coreopsis, already in this catalogue, is the one that genuinely persists. Plains coreopsis persists differently - not as a plant but as a seed bank. It self-sows heavily, and a stand that looks permanent after five years is five generations, not one plant, which is why it is the coreopsis for a meadow sowing and the wrong one for a slot in a border where something has to be there next April. What you get for accepting that is the best flower in the genus for the money. Solitary daisies one to two inches across, seven to nine bright yellow rays each painted maroon at the base around a red-brown disc, carried in quantity on wiry branching stems above finely cut foliage. MBG rates it showy and good for cutting, lists no serious insect or disease problems, and puts its maintenance at low. It is the plant behind most of the yellow in a roadside wildflower mix. Two cautions belong next to that. It self-seeds hard enough that MBG recommends deadheading specifically to prevent it, and it has naturalised across nearly fifty territories outside its home range, from Britain and Poland to Japan, Java and Fiji - so treat spare seed as something to bin rather than scatter. And the two best sources disagree about water: MBG grows it dry to medium and calls it drought tolerant, while the Wildflower Center rates its water use HIGH and says the good years are the wet ones. Both are describing the same plant honestly, and the record below explains why.

A widespread native perennial in the mint family with showy lavender flower heads through summer, distinctly more drought-tolerant than its cousin scarlet bee balm (Monarda didyma). Supports ruby-throated hummingbirds, hummingbird clearwing moths, three documented specialist bees, and provides stem-nesting bee shelter through winter.