Wild strawberry

The classic lawn daisy: a low, rosette-forming perennial with spoon-shaped leaves and white, often pink-tipped ray flowers around a yellow disc on short stems, blooming from spring into autumn. The flowers close at night and in rain - the old "day's eye" - and double cool-season bedding forms such as "Pomponette" and "Habanera" are widely grown. Often written off as a lawn weed, it is in fact a tough, charming, child's-favourite groundcover that flowers for months, thrives in mown grass because it keeps its blooms low, and offers easy early-season nectar and pollen. The flowers and young leaves are edible.

Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis) is a vigorous, spreading native perennial of moist meadows, streambanks, and ditches across much of northern and central North America, grown for clean white cup-shaped flowers held over deeply cut, sharply toothed foliage in late spring and early summer. Be warned first: it spreads aggressively by underground rhizomes and can become a thug in a normal bed, running well beyond where you plant it and knitting into large colonies. That habit makes it an excellent plant for naturalizing a damp bank or filling a tough, contained spot, and a poor choice for a tidy mixed border where it will overrun quieter neighbors. Each flower carries five showy, petal-like white sepals around a boss of yellow stamens (the true petals are absent) on erect hairy stems to about 12 to 24 inches. It wants medium to wet soil in full sun to part shade and is hardy roughly from USDA zone 3 to 8.

A low, clump-forming native woodland violet of eastern North America, grown for its early spring blue-to-purple flowers with conspicuous white throats held over glossy, heart-shaped leaves. It does not run, but self-seeds freely - to the point of being weedy in rich, moist ground. A larval host for fritillary butterflies and a nectar source for early bees and butterflies; the leaves are high in vitamins A and C.

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.

An upright, clump-forming perennial of the mint family native to the upper Midwest, Great Plains, and into central Canada, named for its anise-scented foliage. From June through September it carries dense terminal spikes of lavender-to-purple two-lipped flowers above square stems and opposite, toothed leaves. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as a nectar source with special value to native bees, bumble bees, and honey bees, and it also draws butterflies and hummingbirds.

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 vertically stacked edible polyculture: nut-bearing canopy, fruit-bearing understory, berry shrub layer, herbaceous layer, and groundcover for temperate eastern North America.