Virginia bluebells

A clump-forming native perennial of the carrot family that opens flat-topped, compound umbels of tiny golden-yellow flowers in late spring, when little else is blooming. The toothed, twice-divided-in-threes (biternate) foliage and the bare central flower stalk on each umbel set it apart from other umbellifers. A documented larval host for the black swallowtail and an early-season nectar and pollen source for short-tongued native bees.

Whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) is the slenderest and most drought-tolerant of the common native milkweeds, a fine-textured perennial of prairies, glades, and dry open ground across most of central and eastern North America. It grows 12 to 24 inches tall on wiry unbranched stems clothed in narrow, needle-like leaves set in whorls, and carries small umbels of greenish-white flowers from midsummer into early fall, later than most milkweeds. Like all Asclepias it is a monarch host plant, and its late nectar feeds bees and butterflies when little else is flowering. It wants full sun and lean, dry soil, and it is tougher and less bulky than common milkweed, though it spreads by rhizome and can form a wandering colony on good ground. All parts are toxic, and whorled milkweed is one of the more poisonous milkweeds to grazing livestock, so keep it out of pastures and hayfields.

A native eastern North American clump-forming perennial with palmately-lobed foliage and clustered pink-to-purple five-petaled spring flowers. Among the most reliable native woodland perennials for cool-moist sites; tolerates a wide range of conditions and slowly naturalizes by self-seeding.

The native sundial lupine of eastern North American sand barrens and oak savannas - erect 1-2.5-foot stems carry showy spring spikes of blue, pea-shaped flowers above palmately divided leaves of 7-11 radiating leaflets. A nitrogen-fixing legume of dry, sandy, acidic soils, it is the sole larval host for the federally endangered Karner Blue butterfly and the Frosted Elfin, and carries the Xerces Society "special value to native bees and bumble bees" flag.

A native eastern North American perennial with fine threadlike foliage and abundant bright-yellow daisy flowers from early summer through fall. Drought-tolerant + long-blooming; among the most reliable native sunny-border perennials. The Moonbeam cultivar is the most-planted form.

A native eastern North American woodland aster with loose sprays of small white starry flowers in fall - among the few asters that bloom reliably in shade. Tough + drought-tolerant once established; among the best native fall-bloomers for shaded gardens.

A full-shade woodland-floor community for deep shade beneath a closed canopy: an understory shrub, spreading groundcovers, spring ephemerals, and a large fern - eastern North American natives that expect low light and leaf-litter soil.