Outdoor Plants

Outdoor Plants
( tar9/wachara/andym80/rgbspace/lenor/coombescat/123rf.com)
( tar9/wachara/rgbspace/lenor/123rf.com)
Affiliate Disclaimer: Tipsbulletin.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com
Useful Tips To Make Your Everyday Life Just A Bit Better
There’s nothing better than hanging baskets and window boxes overflowing with colorful blooms, tall, upright, fragrant flowers in the garden, and variegated foliage nestled beneath trees. With so many choices, it’s hard to know where to start. While some plants require extra care, there are many easy to grow outdoor plants that are great for beginning gardeners.
There is more to gain from gardening besides beautifying your yard. Depending on the plant type, it provides pollen and nectar for insects and birds, cut flowers for a vase in your home, herbs for adding to tea, vegetables, and fruits for a healthy diet.
Working in the garden is also therapeutic. With so many benefits, it’s no wonder you’ve decided to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.
Having once been beginning gardeners ourselves, we understand the overwhelming feeling you get while trying to decide which plants to start with, and you probably have a few questions. We’ve got answers to common questions and a list of easy-care plants.
Annuals are an excellent choice for beginning gardeners. They only grow for one season and require little care. They put all of their energy into blooming throughout the entire growing season and die off after the first frost.
Perennials put their energy into their roots and future growth, and generally only bloom once. However, some varieties bloom continually throughout the growing season. These types of plants grow back every year, usually with more growth than the year before.
The first thing to think about when choosing outdoor plants is to decide whether you want annuals, perennials, or both. If you are renting your home or have limited space, annuals might be the best choice.
If you have plenty of yard space and want your plants to grow back every year, then choose perennials.
There are a few things to look for when browsing your local nursery. Read the plant label for specific growing instructions for light, soil, and watering requirements.
Check the USDA hardiness zone and make sure that your zone area falls within the guidelines. Finally, check the plant for healthy foliage and proper growth.
Plan a variety of growing things to add color and texture to your yard. If deer are a problem, consider some deer-resistant flowering vines like clematis or annuals like marigolds. While nothing is completely deer-proof, the four-legged creatures are less likely to munch on these types of plants.
Outdoor plants vary depending on where you live. Many outdoor plants are grown for ornamental purposes, like rose bushes and flowering tobacco.
Perennial and annual flowering plants provide fragrant blooms of color and attract pollinators, while foliage plants and succulents provide groundcover and points of interest in shadier areas of the yard or garden.
On the other hand, some outdoor plants serve a different purpose, such as herbs and vegetable plants. Many plants grown indoors are grown outdoors as well, and vice versa, as long as they receive the same growing conditions.
Low maintenance plants require very little care besides regular watering. Some flowering plants perform better and grow more blooms with regular deadheading to remove dead flower blossoms. Place mulch in layers around the base of your flowers to prevent weed growth.
Certain varieties of perennial plants and shrubs require trimming to encourage future growth. It’s easy to prune them in the fall or early spring, and the result is well worth your time.
Daylilies are perennials and are one of the easiest flowers to grow. With countless new hybrids, they come in a vast selection of colors, sizes, and shapes. As the name suggests, most types bloom for one day but have long-term blossoms when planted in clusters.
They burst in colors that range from white, pink, and yellow to purple, red, and orange and enjoy full to partial sun. Enjoy summer and fall blooms in zones 3 to 10, as they reach an average height and width of up to 3 feet. These low maintenance perennials are drought tolerant.
Marigolds are an annual flower that produces fragrant blooms of red, orange, and yellow from late spring to fall. These low growing flowers reach a height of up to 12 inches, making them an ideal filler for any garden or container.
Growing flowers from seed is easy with marigolds if you have a little patience. Not only are these flowers low maintenance, but they are deer-resistant and drought-tolerant. Place marigolds in a sunny location, remove faded and dead blooms as needed, and watch them flourish.
Geraniums are an all-time time favorite among gardeners due to their constant blooming and easy-care. Expect to enjoy bright and colorful blooms from early spring to late summer in colors of red, purple, orange, white, and pink. They continue blooming if brought indoors before the first frost.
These annuals reach an average height up to 2 feet and thrive in sunny locations. Do they need a lot of water? Are geraniums drought tolerant plants? Yes, these beauties are low-maintenance, deer resistant, and drought tolerant, making them an ideal flower for beginning gardeners.
These annual shade flowers pop with color with their dark and shiny foliage and delicate and bright blossoms. With color choices that include purple, blue, red, orange, pink, yellow, and white, you’ll undoubtedly find your favorite.
While impatiens love the shade, they do tolerate part sun. It’s one of the easiest flowering annuals to grow and doesn’t require deadheading. Place these flowers at the base of taller plants and watch them fill the area with color from spring to fall.
Begonias are plants that are easy to grow that fill a shady garden with stunning flowers and foliage. All these annuals in northern areas require is rich, well-drained soil and fertilizer to thrive. These low growing flowers bloom in pink, yellow, orange, and white, surrounded by colorful foliage.
As a perennial, begonias grow in zones 7 through 11 and bloom from spring to fall. This plant is low maintenance and grows well in both containers and garden settings.
Imagine delicately colored blossoms fluttering on a breeze, releasing a fragrant floral scent, and you imagine the petunia. These low growing flowers come in a full color range from blue, purple, and pink to red, white, and yellow, and hummingbirds can’t resist their nectar.
Enjoy sunny blooms from spring through fall with these flowers, whether you plant them in containers or the garden. While these delicate-looking annuals don’t look it, they are hardy, low maintenance, and deer resistant.
Miscanthus is an ornamental grass that adds variety and interest to the garden. Its graceful, white, and pink seed heads have a feathery appearance when in full bloom and dance gently in the breeze.
With an average height of 8 feet, this perennial plant gets rather large, but there are also dwarf sizes for smaller gardens. This ornamental grass grows well in full or part sun in zones 4 to 9. It’s deer resistant, drought-tolerant, and an excellent plant for new gardeners.
Hostas are well known for their shiny, green or variegated leaves. Many varieties provide a foliage range of colors, shapes, and sizes. While they have a summer bloom of white and pink flowers, they are well known for their ability to fill garden gaps and borders.
These shade-loving perennials grow from 1 to 3 feet in height and spread up to 8 feet. They grow best in zones 3 through 9 and are both low maintenance and drought tolerant.
This fast-growing sedum is the perfect easy-to-grow plant for ground cover. It produces clusters of star-shaped blooms on tall spikes from early to mid-summer and has needle-like foliage that is golden or chartreuse depending on the amount of sun it receives.
This creeping variety of sedum is a perennial that grows best in zones 3 to 10 and prefers partial to full sun. This low maintenance plant is drought resistant and attracts birds to the garden.
These cheerful yellow, orange, and white flowers bring joy to the garden during early spring or they do just as well as potted plants that you can move where you like. These prolific bloomers have a trumpet-shaped cup, and each stem produces one to five flowers. These fragrant flowers come back every year and multiply rapidly.
Daffodils are a perennial bulb that thrives in zones 3 through 9. They enjoy part to full sun, make excellent cut flowers, and grow well in containers or the garden. They are easy to maintain, deer resistant, and drought tolerant.
There are many different varieties of hydrangea, and each has a different size, color, and shape. These easy to grow shrubs produce huge bouquets in shades of blue, pink, white, red, green, and purple from summer to fall, and are great for use as a cut flower. In some varieties, you can even change the color of the blooms by altering the soil pH.
These low maintenance perennial shrubs grow best in zones 3 through 9 and enjoy both partial shade and sun. Hydrangeas grow well in a container or garden, and reach heights of 8 to 20 feet, depending on the variety.
The fuzzy leaves of this plant are reminiscent of lamb’s ears and provide lush display in the garden. Each leaf has a fine layer of tiny white hairs that give it a soft and silky feel when touched. It also produces purple, red, pink, and flower blooms throughout the season.
This low maintenance plant is great for beginning gardeners and grows as a perennial in zones 4 through 9. It enjoys part to full sun, is deer resistant and drought tolerant, and attracts birds.
Honeysuckle is one of the prettiest climbing plants and the perfect plant if you want to draw hummingbirds, butterflies, and other pollinators to your yard. This easy-care climbing plant produces fragrant blooms of red, peach, white, and pink from summer to fall, and grows well along a fence or trellis.
These low maintenance, easy vine plants thrive in the right circumstances. Honeysuckles are easy to grow full sun perennials in zones 4 through 9. With the right conditions, expect this plant to grow to a height of up to 20 feet or more.
Lure butterflies and hummingbirds to your yard throughout the growing season with the fruit-scented blossoms of the butterfly bush. The flowers of these butterfly nectar plants spike out of the bush in vibrant colors of red, white, purple, pink, and blue and make an excellent cut flower for the home.
These perennial shrubs grow best in zones 5 through 10, are both drought tolerant and deer resistant, and are easy to maintain. They reach an average height and width of 8 feet but can grow taller, depending on the variety.
Growing low-maintenance outdoor plants is just as easy as growing a houseplant once you know what the plant needs to thrive. Start by choosing plants that match your hardiness zone area. Once you do that, the only thing left to do is get your hands dirty and watch your flowers and plants flourish in their new home.
Filling a garden with easy to grow outdoor plants not only brings beauty to your yard but is therapeutic, so why not share our list of easy to grow plants with your friends and family on Facebook and Pinterest?
Receive the latest Home & Garden Tips by entering your email below:
We respect your privacy and take protecting it very seriously. No spam!

There was an error. Please try again.

There was an error. Please try again.

Jamie McIntosh has written about gardening and special occasion flowers for the Spruce since 2011. She has more than 20 years of experience caring for flowers and plants. She was a feature writer for Organic Gardening at Suite101, where she won awards for her writing.

Learn more about The Spruce's
Editorial Process

Mary Marlowe Leverette is one of the industry's most highly-regarded housekeeping and fabric care experts, sharing her knowledge on efficient housekeeping, laundry, and textile conservation. She is also a Master Gardener with over 40 years' experience; writing for over 20 years.

Learn more about The Spruce's
Review Board

The Spruce uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Learn tips for creating your most beautiful (and bountiful) garden ever.

There was an error. Please try again.

The Spruce is part of the Dotdash Meredith publishing family.

We've updated our Privacy Policy, which will go in to effect on September 1, 2022. Review our Privacy Policy

Gardening may be one of America's favorite hobbies, but it's not without its downsides. Can you imagine investing dozens of hours and hundreds of dollars redecorating your bedroom, only to have it crumble into ashes after a year? That is how it feels to start a new garden that withers away after a season.

Not all plants are created equal. While it is possible to kill these plants, by choosing some of these ultra vigorous plants that tolerate a wide range of growing conditions, you can be assured that your investment of time and money will continue to bring you pleasure for many growing seasons to come.

In neighborhoods with new construction, the topsoil is stripped away, and the rubble that's left behind hardly qualifies as soil . What to plant in such a harsh environment? Start with a tough-as-nails perennial that features a cloud of purple flowers for three months in its first season. One thing Russian sage can't live without is full sun , essential for healthy bloom production.

The daffodil is one of those plants that you can casually scatter here and there in the landscape, and then look like a garden genius forever after each spring as your flowers multiply 1 . Plant them deeply in the fall to ensure many seasons of returns; at least 4-inches beneath the soil's surface. A splash of bulb fertilizer is fine for pampered bulbs but not really necessary for peak performance. Space them several inches apart to allow for the colonies to have room to grow over the years.

Don't let the soft, tumbling foliage of Lamium maculatum 2 fool you: neither shade nor drought slows this blooming ground cover down. Variegated or silver leaves emerge early in the spring, and snapdragon-like purple or white blooms soon follow. Dead nettle plants spread quickly by shallow-rooted runners, but you can pull up extras and use them as accents spilling over the edges of your containers and window boxes .

More than just a mere herb for the cat to frolic in, Nepeta x faassenii gained permanent cult status when the variety 'Walker's Low' was named as the 2007 Perennial Plant of the Year. Lovely grayish-green foliage complements the informal border, and bees delight in the nectar-rich violet blooms that appear throughout the summer months. Plants grow about two feet tall but have a prostrate habit that looks attractive at the edge of a wall or path .

Stella D' Oro daylilies have become an office park landscaping staple, but daylilies have much more to offer than the popular gold everblooming variety. Although the color spectrum is usually limited to the warmer side of the color wheel, interesting color patterns and flower forms take the available cultivar number into the thousands. Full sun is best, although darker varieties may benefit from afternoon shade to prevent sunscald. Fertilization isn't necessary, but an occasional deep watering during summer dry spells is beneficial.

Ornamental grasses belong on every lazy gardener's wish list. Many of them originate from the prairie and are used to surviving a range of pests and weather conditions. The deep roots of feather reed grass make it adaptable to wet and dry soils, and it grows just fine in lean soils, requiring no fertilizer. The six-foot blooming stalks make a handsome vertical accent that endures well into fall.

Sometimes tough plants have a reputation for being invasive , but drought-tolerant sedum plants always mind their manners. Also called stonecrop, this plant can survive for years without any watering, dividing, mulching, or deadheading . The varied genus offers tall and creeping varieties, all with succulent leaves that shrug off insects. Start with the wildly popular 'Autumn Joy' variety, which produces nectar-rich pink flower clusters at the end of summer.

Gardeners who make room for a Buddleia in the landscape will soon discover that it's a one-stop buffet for many species of butterflies. The long flower panicles are comprised of many individual blooms, each with a rich store of nectar , which is why you will observe happy butterflies lingering over and around the shrub for long periods on warm, sunny days. Plant a butterfly bush in full sun in average soil, and cut plants back in early spring to encourage healthy branching. Flowering happens on new wood,

Baptisia plants produce those blue blooms that complete any garden design, without the fussiness that many blue flowers exhibit. Plant false indigo in the rocky rubble of a new home construction site, and it will do just fine. Available in white, yellow, and purple hues, false indigo plants produce their blooming spires in the spring at the same time as peonies and bleeding heart. Butterflies love the low-maintenance plants, but deer don't 3 .

Gardeners who wish to grow plants under a tree must contend with shade, dry soil, and competition for nutrients. Lady's mantle is one tough plant that can handle this environment. An exceptionally hardy plant, lady's mantle will survive zone 3 winters 4 . Chartreuse flowers that appear in June are a lovely foil for blue and purple blossoms. Plants often self-seed prolifically, which you can allow to expand your collection or prevent with a few minutes of deadheading after blooming.

Stachys byzantina is a plant for the fifth sense in the garden, as it is a tactile plant unlike few others. More than just fuzzy, the silvery leaves are downright woolly and hold up to stroking more than a silky flower petal would. The lavender spikes aren't showy, but bees love them. Lamb's ear plants grow in full to partial sun and are drought tolerant . The clumps spread moderately each year to provide pass-along plants for friends, or you can dig some up to add to your container gardens .

Much ado is made of the drought tolerance of plants, but a wet spot in the garden can be just as difficult to cultivate. Bee balm is one answer to the soggy garden dilemma . 3-foot tall clumps feature blue, pink, red, or white flowers that attract butterflies and hummingbirds. As a member of the mint family, bee balm is an assertive plant, but you can pull up unwanted plants that spread out of bounds. New varieties boast superior mildew resistance, especially 'Marshall's Delight' and 'Violet Queen.'

Spring Daffodils . University of Maryland Extension
Lamium maculatum . North Carolina Extension Gardener
Baptisia . North Carolina Extension Gardener
Alchemilla mollis. North Carolina Extension Gardener

There was an error. Please try again.

There was an error. Please try again.

21 Best Patios Plants for All Gardening Levels
Create a Potted Plant Portal on Your Patio

Jamie McIntosh has written about gardening and special occasion flowers for the Spruce since 2011. She has more than 20 years of experience caring for flowers and plants. She was a feature writer for Organic Gardeni
Mature Car
Cute Teen Girl Masturbating
Rico Nasty Rage

Outdoor Plants

Report Page