High-impact, Low-care
These easy-to-grow plants provide low-maintenance beauty and help conserve resources. The list is inspired by the Tracy DiSabato-Aust book, "High-impact, Low-care Garden Plants: Tough but Beautiful Plants that Anyone Can Grow"
Annuals (8)
Butterfly Attracting (81)
Creative Containers (52)
Drought-Defiant (87)
Midwest Native (84)
Salt-Tolerant Plants (26)
Shade-tolerant (54)
Trees & Shrubs (74)
Abies lasiocarpa var. arizonica 'Compacta'
Common Name: Dwarf Rocky Mountain Fir
Dwarf Rocky Mountain Fir is a slow-growing variety of the Blue Alpine Fir. Needles are a striking silver-blue, bark is white and corky at maturity. Use as small landscape feature, in a container or raised bed, or in a larger rock garden....
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Acanthus spinosus
Common Name: Spiny Bear's Breeches
Spiny Bear's Breeches has leaves that are deeply cut with spiny margins. White flower spikes with purple bracts in late spring to midsummer....
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Acer griseum
Common Name: Paperbark Maple
Paperbark Maple is perhaps the most beautiful maple for use as a landscape specimen. Trifoliate leaves offer excellent fall color, ranging from red-orange to bronze. The orange-y peeling, papery bark provides year-round interest....
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Acer japonicum 'Aconitifolium'
Common Name: Fernleaf Fullmoon Maple
Full-Moon Maple has deeply lobed leaves, crimson autumn color, and plenty of small, reddish flowers in spring. Grow as small tree or multi-stemmed shrub. Growth habit is mounded, bushy, and spreading....
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Allium schubertii
Common Name: Tumbleweed Onion
Fantastic, beautiful pink fireworks, very striking and rather alien-looking: a real show stopper! The whole flower ball rolls in the wind, eventually scattering the seed over a wide area....
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Angelica gigas
Common Name: Korean Angelica
Korean Angelica is a stunning biennial which grows head high in its second year and has large purple seed heads in summer that attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Fragrant. ...
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Aralia elata 'Aureovariegata'
Common Name: Gold-variegated Aralia
Gold-variegated Aralia is a small tree with spectacular, variegated foliage. Leaflets are edged in yellow....
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Aster oblongifolius var. angustatus 'Raydon's Favorite'
Common Name: Raydon's Favorite Aromatic Aster
Purple, fine textured single ray flowers in September and October, with aromatic foliage. A butterfly magnet and terrific color and texture addition to the fall border. ...
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Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost'
Common Name: Jack Frost Brunnera
'Jack Frost' leaves are a distinctive silvery white with green primary and secondary veins and a thin green rim around the leaf edges. The basal foliage forms a hosta-like mound of heart-shaped leaves that are attractive throughout the growing season...
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Calamagrostis brachytricha
Common Name: Korean Feather-reed Grass
Korean Feather-reed Grass is a clump-forming, warm season grass with bright green leaves. Pink-tinted late summer blooms fade to cream in fall and finish a straw color in winter. A graceful addition to the shade or part shade garden! One of the few f...
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Callicarpa dichotoma
Common Name: Purple Beautyberry
Purple Beautyberry is grown for its rows of bright fuschia fruit. The small, deciduous shrub is native to China, Korea, and Japan. Its long, arching branches often touch the ground, giving it an elegant shape. The small pink flowers in summer are fol...
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Carex elata 'Aurea'
Common Name: Bowles Golden Sedge
Bowles' Golden Sedge has vivid foliage that adds bright color to the sunny or part shade garden. The yellow seems to glow in partial shade. Use this dramatic clump of foliage near water or in shallow water, or in another moist location....
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Carex morrowii 'Ice Dance'
Common Name:
Ice Dance' has strap-like leaves striped with a clean white edge. 'Ice Dance' is evergreen and adds a sense of permanence to the winter shade garden....
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Ceratostigma plumbaginoides
Common Name: Hardy Plumbago
Hardy Plumbago is an outstanding, long-lived groundcover that slowly weaves itself into the garden fabric, creating large drifts of fall color. The deep blue flowers are numerous and long lasting beginning in early fall. As the flowering finishes, th...
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Dicentra spectabilis 'Gold Heart'
Common Name: Gold Heart Bleeding Heart
Gold Heart Bleeding Heart offers vivid golden foliage on large open plants. It is a stand out in shade gardens! Traditional heart shaped pink flowers dangling from long wands above the leaves....
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Dryopteris erythrosora 'Brilliance'
Common Name: Brilliance Autumn Fern
Brilliance is an improved Autumn Fern. Plants form a colorful groundcover with pink fiddleheads that turn coppery orange as they unfurl. Fronds age to a lustrous dark green and remain well into winter. New growth continues through the season, giving ...
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Elymus hystrix
Common Name: Bottlebrush Grass
Bottlebrush grass is a Midwest native perennial grass found in dry woodland areas. Greenish, bristly flower heads (9-10" long) rise well above summer foliage in Summer. Heads mature to brown and persist on the plant well into Fall. ...
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Eupatorium maculatum 'Gateway'
Common Name: Gateway Joe Pye Weed
Gateway Joe Pye Weed attracts butterflies with its huge, rosy mauve flowers. The flower clusters sit atop deep red stems. More compact and shorter than others in this species....
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Fagus sylvatica
Common Name: Tricolor Beech
Tricolor Beech is a slow growing with a spreading habit and elliptical, wavy-edged leaves. Tricolor Beech has purple leaves marked with white and pink. Foliage burns in hot sun or dry winds. This tree's bark is smooth and silvery....
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Geranium 'Rozanne'
Common Name: Rozanne Hardy Geranium
Rozanne Hardy Geranium is the longest blooming and most prolific blue-flowered geranium. The flowers continue blooming through the heat of midsummer, and the deeply cut leaves remain lovely, on plants that are spreading but not sprawling....
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Hydrangea macrophylla Bailmer
Common Name: Endless Summer® Hydrangea
The first Hydrangea macrophylla that blooms on both old and new wood. Flowers virtually all season long....
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Indocalamus tessellatus
Common Name: Bigleaf Bamboo
Bigleaf Bamboo is an extremely hardy semi dwarf species that bears the largest leaves of any bamboo in cultivation, up to 24 inches by four inches. It adapts very well to shaded sites and is a favorite pick for indoor container growth....
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Iris sibirica 'Caesar's Brother'
Common Name: Siberian Iris
'Caesar's Brother' Siberian Iris produces deep purple flowers in late spring on rigid stems. Clump forming. After bloom, the vase-shaped foliage retains its green color into fall. ...
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Ligularia dentata 'Britt-Marie Crawford'
Common Name: Britt-Marie Crawford Elephant Ears
This selection of Ligularia, or Elephant Ears, is a bold specimen perennial that needs a moist location. It forms a clump of large, rounded maroon-black leaves. Taller stems appear in midsummer, bearing clusters of bright golden orange daisy flowers....
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Lonicera periclymenum 'Graham Thomas'
Common Name: Graham Thomas Woodbine Honeysuckle
Vigorous climbing species. Flowers bud white and bloom yellow....
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Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Ogon'
Common Name: Ogon Dawn Redwood
Ogon Dawn Redwood is a spectacular deciduous conifer with golden foliage. Foliage offers orange fall color. Also called 'Gold Rush' Redwood....
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Miscanthus sinensis var. condensatus 'Cosmopolitan'
Common Name: Cosmopolitan Miscanthus
Cosmopolitan Miscanthus is a vigorous ornamental grass with broad, weeping leaves and feathery, beige, flower clusters. This graceful clumping grass stands out as a focal point in a border....
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Molinia caerulea subsp. Arundinacea 'Skyracer'
Common Name: Skyracer Tall Purple Moor Grass
Skyracer is a tufted, compact perennial grass with dense clumps of slender, foot-long green leaves marked with stripes of creamy yellow. In summer, slim, pale yellow flower stalks rise three feet above foliage in an arching pattern. Each inflorescenc...
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Panicum virgatum 'Rehbraun'
Common Name: Rehbraun Switchgrass
Selected for its rich red leaf coloring from mid-summer into fall, 'Rehbraun' Switchgrass grows well in full sun and average soil....
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Paonia obovata
Common Name: Woodland Peony
Woodland Peony has spectacular white flowers with purple filaments. In spring, purple divided leaves push through the soil, rapidly unfurling and turning green. The bloom colors vary, and range from white or light pink to magenta and red. ...
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Papaver orientale 'Raspberry Queen'
Common Name: Oriental Poppy
'Raspberry Queen' is a fine selection out of the most outstanding new hybrid Oriental Poppy varieties. The show-stopping flowers are huge and brightly colored with velvety fringed and frilled petals. They are fully double with bold markings and desig...
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Picea bicolor 'Howell's Dwarf Tigertail'
Common Name: Howell's Dwarf Tigertail Spruce
'Howell's Dwarf Tigertail' is the most colorful of all bicolors. Needles are bright silver-blue on the undersides and green on top. It is an attractive, hardy dwarf conifer that forms a mound. Shape easily maintained by pruning upward growing shoots....
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Pinus densiflora 'Oculis-draconis'
Common Name: Dragon's Eye Pine
Dragon's Eye Pine is a cultivar of the Japanese Red Pine. The common name results from the two yellow bands that mark the otherwise green needles. This banding is said to give the illusion of a dragon's eye when you look at it closely. The yellow ban...
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Polygonatum odoratum 'Variegatum'
Common Name: Variegated Solomon's Seal
Variegated Solomon’s Seal is a graceful shade plant. The handsome foliage features narrow, pure white streaks along the margins of the leaves. Leaves appear on arched burgundy stems and turn a brilliant golden hue in fall. Fragrant, bell-shaped white...
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Rosa rugosa 'Hansa'
Common Name: Hansa's Rugosa Rose
Hansa's Rugosa Rose has a bushy habit with dark green compound foliage along densely spiny stems. Suckering habit allows plants to colonize. Rose to pink flowers have a spicy fragrance and followed by hips. Double, dark pink flowers offer a spicy fra...
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Rudbeckia maxima
Common Name: Giant Coneflower
Giant Coneflower makes a strong vertical statement with its large, smooth leaves and towering stems. It bears short, yellow ray flowers with giant, upright cones at the center. It prefers average soil with good drainage, and is excellent in native or...
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Spigelia marilandica
Common Name: Indian Pink
Indian Pink is an excellent source of nectar for hummingbirds when it blooms in June. Plants form clumps with glossy green foliage topped by crimson red, trumpet-shaped flowers tipped in yellow. When a large colony is in bloom, it is a spectacular si...
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Syneilesis aconitifolia
Common Name: Shredded Umbrella Plant
Shredded Umbrella Plant is a rare woodland species, native to the dry hillsides of Japan and Korea. In early spring, the white wooly leaves push through the ground, like may apples. The fascinating foliage flattens out atop 18” stems by mid-spring. A...
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Thalictrum 'Elin'
Common Name: Elin Meadow Rue
Loosely garbed in striking steely blue foliage, 'Elin's Meadow Rue features tall, purple-tinged stems and maintains a stately carriage. An impressive hybrid between Thalictrum flavum var. glaucum and Thalictrum rochebrunianum, its sturdy upright stal...
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Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard'
Common Name: Color Guard Yucca
Color Guard Yucca is a dramatic architectural plant. Its unique foliage makes it one of the most beautiful variegated yuccas on the market. Its sword-shaped leaves bear bold central stripes of bright canary-yellow against a rich celadon edge. In coo...
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