Sweet pea

Jasmine tobacco, also sold as flowering tobacco, sweet tobacco, or winged tobacco, is a tender perennial in the nightshade family (Solanaceae) native to southern and southeastern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and northeastern Argentina. The true species grows 3 to 5 feet tall from a low rosette of large, hairy basal leaves with winged stalks, and from early summer to frost it carries long-tubed, star-faced flowers, white to greenish-yellow, that open in the evening and pour out a sweet scent through the night for moths. It is perennial only in USDA zones 10a-11b, so most gardeners grow it as a summer annual. Many plants sold as 'flowering tobacco' are compact hybrids (Nicotiana × sanderae and similar strains) up to 24 inches tall whose flowers open by day and are mostly unscented; for the night fragrance, grow the species from seed. Be aware that it is poisonous: every part of the plant contains nicotine, it is harmful if eaten, and the RHS advises gloves when handling it.

An old garden-favorite annual native to Mexico, grown for showy daisy-like flowers in nearly every color but true blue - red, yellow, orange, pink, rose, lavender, green, and white. Bushy, leafy plants rise on upright, hairy, branching stems and bloom continuously from early summer to frost. A magnet for butterflies and hummingbirds, and one of the most reliable cut-and-come-again cutting-garden flowers.

Chionodoxa forbesii (syn. Scilla forbesii) is a small bulbous perennial native to western Turkey - botanically recorded only from Babadağ Mountain in Muğla Province - producing loose racemes of up to 12 star-shaped, sky-blue flowers with white centers on 4 to 6 inches stems in early to mid-spring. It naturalises freely under deciduous trees and in lawns, filling gaps with carpets of colour before most other plants wake from winter, which is its genuine garden gift. The honest catch is its eagerness to spread: it seeds prolifically and the bulbs multiply quickly, so in a small garden or a formal bed it can crowd out neighbours and become hard to contain once established. All parts are toxic if eaten, and the bulbs need a dry summer dormancy or they rot.

Heather, or ling (Calluna vulgaris), is the low, wiry evergreen shrub that colours the moors and heaths of Europe purple in late summer. It grows only 4 inches to 24 inches tall in dense, spreading mats of tiny scale-like leaves, and from July to September it is covered in spikes of mauve (wild) to white, pink, or red (cultivar) flowers that draw an intense traffic of bees - the source of prized heather honey. It is beautiful, wildlife-rich, and extremely cold-hardy, but it is also a fussy plant with two non-negotiable demands: genuinely acidic soil and cool summers. The honest catches: it will not thrive on chalk or in hot, humid heat (NC State advises against planting south of zone 6), and where introduced - notably New Zealand - it has become an invasive weed.

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.

Trailing lantana (also called weeping lantana, purple trailing lantana, or creeping lantana) is a low, sprawling evergreen shrub or subshrub from southern South America - Uruguay, Paraguay, northern Argentina, Bolivia, and southern and eastern Brazil - named for Montevideo. Unlike common lantana (Lantana camara), an upright shrub with multicolored heads, it stays 12 to 18 inches tall and spreads 3 to 5 feet on vine-like stems, making a mat of dark green, coarsely toothed leaves covered in small clusters of lilac to purple-pink flowers with yellow throats from early summer to frost, and almost all year where winters are frost-free. It is winter hardy only in USDA zones 8a-10b (in zone 8 it dies back to the ground and resprouts in spring if well mulched) and is grown as an annual or container plant in colder regions. Two cautions come first. It is poisonous: NC State Extension rates it medium severity, with toxic fruits, leaves, sap, seeds, and stems, toxic to people, dogs, cats, and horses, and Weeds Australia reports it is suspected of poisoning cattle. And it escapes gardens: NC State Extension records it naturalized in the southern United States, Hawaii, New Zealand, and eastern Australia, Weeds Australia lists it as a declared weed in Queensland, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia, and the UF/IFAS Assessment of Non-native Plants predicts it to be invasive and does not recommend it anywhere in Florida.