A mat-forming herbaceous perennial in the mint family (Lamiaceae), native to the rocky hills of Turkey, the Caucasus, and Iran. NC State Extension describes it as grown chiefly for its thick, soft, silvery-green leaves that are densely white-woolly and velvety to the touch, 4-6 inches long, borne in low basal rosettes about a foot tall and a foot or so wide. In summer it sends up terminal spikes of tiny purplish-pink two-lipped flowers, though the bloom stalks are often sheared off to keep the foliage compact. Deer-resistant and moderately drought-tolerant once established, it wants full sun and very well-drained soil and resents wet leaves and humid, soggy ground.

The classic cool-season bedding plant, grown for 2-4 inch flattened "face" flowers in nearly every color, usually marked with a contrasting dark blotch and central whiskering. A garden-origin hybrid (not a wild species) treated as a short-lived perennial run as a cool-weather annual or biennial — it blooms hardest in spring and fall and inevitably succumbs to summer heat. The Missouri Botanical Garden lists it as the top-selling winter bedding plant in the deep South.

A low, mat-forming member of the mustard family from the Mediterranean coast, grown almost everywhere as a cool-season annual for its dense mounds of tiny, sweetly fragrant white four-petaled flowers. The flowering is so profuse it often hides the gray-green foliage entirely. It thrives in cool weather, tolerates dry soil and drought, and is a reliable nectar source for small pollinators.

A tender perennial grown almost everywhere as a warm-season bedding annual, prized for blooming reliably from June to frost in white, pink, red, and bicolor. Its thick, waxy dark-green-to-bronze leaves minimize water loss, giving it real tolerance for hot, humid summers. Compact and mounding at 6-12 inches, it is a workhorse edger and container filler in sun-dappled part shade.

A tender perennial from Madagascar grown across temperate North America as a heat-loving summer annual — a mounding 6-18 inch plant in the dogbane family covered in flat five-lobed phlox-like flowers from June to frost. The species blooms rosy-pink to red with a darker mauve throat, and it shrugs off the hot, humid weather that wilts most bedding plants. Every part of the plant is poisonous: it is the natural source of the vinca alkaloids used in chemotherapy.

Blue fescue (Festuca glauca) is a small, neat, evergreen ornamental grass native to Europe, grown almost entirely for its striking foliage: it forms a tidy, rounded, hedgehog-like tuft of fine, needle-thin, intensely steel-blue leaves. In early summer slim, wheat-coloured flower spikes rise just above the dome and fade to buff. Compact and orderly, it reads as a cool blue mound that holds its shape and colour through the seasons. Honesty matters with this grass: the famous blue is at its brightest only in full sun and lean, sharply drained soil — in rich, wet, or shaded ground it sulks, greens out, and rots. It is also short-lived, tending to die out in the centre after three or four years, so it must be lifted and divided regularly to keep fresh blue tufts coming. Like most exotic ornamental grasses it offers little to wildlife compared with native bunchgrasses. The trade's best-known form is the cultivar 'Elijah Blue', which holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit.