Creeping juniper

A native eastern + central North American deciduous shrub with frothy white flower clusters in early summer + nitrogen-fixing root nodules (one of few non-legume nitrogen-fixers). Compact + drought-tolerant; tea was brewed from the leaves during the American Revolution as a colonial-era substitute for British tea.

A clump-forming native milkweed with bright orange summer flowers, strong pollinator value, and tolerance for dry sunny sites.

The California state flower - a drought-tolerant southwestern native perennial (grown as annual outside zones 8-10) producing iconic vibrant orange (sometimes yellow, pink, red, or white in cultivars) cup-shaped flowers that open in sun and close at night or in cloudy weather. Naturalizes readily via self-seeding; among the most reliable hot-dry-site wildflowers for borders, meadow plantings, and rock gardens. Family Papaveraceae but unrelated to the opium poppy (different chemistry, no narcotic alkaloids).

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.

Lanceleaf coreopsis is the yellow daisy most gardeners picture when they hear coreopsis, and the fact worth leading with is lifespan. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center calls it the commonest coreopsis and easy to grow, drought tolerant, and not reliably perennial - a phrase that carries far more weight than a plant tag ever gives it. What you buy flowers hard for two or three years and then thins from the middle out. What keeps the planting going is seed: Missouri Botanical Garden records that it self-seeds freely and will naturalize into large colonies, and rates maintenance MEDIUM rather than low precisely because managing that seed is the recurring job. Everything else about it is easy. It wants dry to medium, well-drained soil in full sun, does best on poor sandy or rocky ground, and Missouri Botanical Garden records it as tolerant of heat, humidity and drought. Flowers are solitary yellow daisies 1 to 2 inches across, eight rays toothed at the tips over a flat yellow disc, from May into July, carried on slender stems above narrow hairy lance-shaped leaves that sit mostly in a basal tuft. Two decisions follow from the seeding. In a meadow, a rock garden, a prairie planting or a dry bank, let it seed and treat the stand as self-renewing rather than as individual plants. In a border, deadhead through the season and divide every two or three years, or accept that you are growing something that moves around. And know what it does where it does not belong: it is listed as an Invasive Alien Species in Japan, where the same freedom with seed has made it a serious pest.

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.