Guest post from Stephanie Cohen, plant maven and co-author of the deliciously readable The Nonstop Garden:

Every year new perennials tempt us to buy them. Some become instant successes, others never achieve notoriety, and some really bad plants hang around forever. It gets more and more difficult to pick the winners and losers. I am either brave or foolhardy for attempting to do this.

Let’s have a drum roll. We are putting down the green carpet. Each plant vying for contention will strut its stuff before entering the garden arena. They have been primped, the PR is out, but can they perform as well in the garden?

First coming down is Helleborus ‘Pink Frost’. It reminds us of another top seller ‘Ivory Prince’ because its buds face outward. The official name is Helleborus x ballardiae Gold Collection ‘Pink Frost’.

She is showing off her buds that appear burgundy and white and open a soft light pink, and maturing to a burgundy red. Her skirt of foliage is a delicious shade of silver green. The delicious attribute of this plant, depending where you live, is the long bloom time from Jan. to April.

This dazzling hellebore is very comfortable performing in part to dense shade. Gardeners will be using in shady nooks or in containers. The deer seldom eat, but occasionally browse.

The competition is very heavy this year with so many entries. The other contender is ‘Ruby Racer’ and it is exactly as it says, it’s a dynamite ‘Ruby Red’. The flowers have been fed an excellent regime of vitamins because each bloom is 3″ wide.

Peonies are always showy. However, the new Itoh hybrids are demanding center stage. They produce buds over a longer period of time and extend the blooming season. Their increased vigor helps the foliage stay greener longer. ‘Bartzella’ was a big yellow double introduced a few years ago. Big and bodacious would be my description.

The newer ones like ‘Kopper Kettle’ are divine! How often do you see semi-double flowers in shades of red, yellow, and orange that look copper from a distance. The cross between herbaceous and tree peonies  makes them easy to grow as new shoots emerge after the dormancy of winter. Many have extremely strong stems so you avoid staking. You have to admit this plant has real sex appeal.

A rather diminutive beauty has just come into sight. The small shade emperor takes center stage. You can hear the buzz. Yes, it’s the trend setter and jet setter-Hosta ‘Cherry Tomato’.

New this year, but it is working its way to being a top selling hosta. It flaunts long lance shaped leaves that are creamy yellow to white with wide dark green margins. Attractive red petioles and purple flowers make you want to take a second look. Besides there is a cuteness factor. It is a miniature sport of ‘Cherry Berry’, who looks upset by our choice.

The sun goddess who will not let the Hosta steal its thunder is the Hemerocallis.We never exclude one of the most popular perennials when it demands center stage.

The ‘Earlybird Cardinal’ is the progeny of Dr. Darrel Apps. It has large watermelon flowers that scream buy me! It flowers one month earlier than other daylilies. It can stop traffic! If this is one you already have, don’t despair, there is ‘Kansas Kitten’. It has a rich lavender purple flowers with a black eye zone.

This is no kitten, but a tiger in disguise. Check out the black eye. This ferocious grower will take on all comers!

The plant quivering in the corner is Salvia officinalis ‘Silver Sabre’. It is extremely nervous because it is a perennial herb. It moves onto the green carpet and wows the crowd. It is a brilliantly variegated edible sage. It stands up straight to show its great habit. The pink swirls in spring against the white variegation are fantastic. It would love to be in your perennial border basking in the sun. It hopes it’s not relegated to the herb or vegetable border. It wants to be a trend setter!

Geranium ‘Blushing Turtle’ walks very slowly onto the carpet. It is definitely not a turtle and turtles don’t blush. However, the soft pink one inch flowers are made bolder because the veins are a vivid pink. It dazzles us in spring and makes a comeback as the air cools in September. The lovely look-alike maple leaves enhance the plant and its toothy grin takes on rich fall hues come September. It makes delightful mounds that might look turtlesque, but definitely more exciting. It’s a good choice for the mixed border.

Fit to be a nectar for the Gods – Agastasche ‘Pink Nectar’ is a flower that attracts bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. They know good nectar when they see it. This is a blooming machine and from summer to fall keeps cranking flowers out. The heavy dense blooms are showy but the plant itself is husky. It can  be the focal point of your mixed border. For those of you needing a thriller for your containers you may have found it. It is considered a zone 7, but if you are Cleopatra, the Queen of Zone Denial, try it any ways.

Give me a red hot mamma any day to offer the needed razzle dazzle to the summer garden. It’s Kniphofia ‘Echo Mango’ and its bright peachy orange spike blends to a lighter color at the bottom. This plant laughs at heat and drought. The sturdy stems hold this tall beauty high above the rest. A great addition to the back of the border. What sets this show off apart is its capability to rebloom. So it can dance in your garden from May to August.

Black is always a hottie. This plant always wears the equivalent of the little black dress. Centaurea ‘Black Sprite’ may scare or delight you. It likes to perform in full sun where its black spidery blooms and green foliage with a silver cast will simply amaze you.

It could become the Lady Gaga of the perennial world. It tolerates heat quite well. This mid border late spring plant will definitely draw comments from the gardening crowd.

Religious people have been looking for the Holy Grail for eons. I have found mine called Silphium perfoliatum ‘Golden Holy Grail’. These are very big, flower from mid summer into fall and produce copious amounts of flowers. The gold finches love the seeds. These are great for naturalizing or attracting birds and butterflies to the garden.

Sometimes people ask me if I am growing corn. Those days are gone now that this plant has yellow foliage.This can be a focal point because you might need sunglasses to miss them. A great plant along a fenceline so you can never see your neighbors again. This plant overshadows all the short plants that have preceded it.

The next plant stumbles a bit as it approaches the runway. What else would you expect from The Party Hardy Series of Sedum? Sedum ‘Birthday Party’ is compact and it manages to keep its stems and large head upright. In late summer its huge deep rose pink flowerheads are showy.

However the purple brown tinted leaves provide interest prior to bloom time. Keep this away from the Agastache or it might turn into more partying than you are prepared for.

Chrysanthemums have been a mainstay crop for fall. Boring at best! Now comes a break in the daisy chain. New Global Warming Mums are unique in that they flower when most of the fall mums have bid us aloha. They are the energizer bunnies of the plant world as they take some frost and keep on blooming. They provide food to the beneficial insects that are still around.  They produce copious amounts of flowers so you can cut them.

Chrysanthemum ‘Glowing Embers’ sports a red flower with a yellow edge. It’s not shy about showing the many flowers it produces per stem. It sings to the crowd, “I’m gonna live forever” because it is a truly hardy mum, bred in Vermont, that is going to overwinter and not die!

Panicum virgatum ‘Emerald Chief’ jumps onto the runway, stands tall, and produces plumes you are going to love. This Switch Grass is big yet graceful. The panicles open red pink in late summer and its foliage turns from green to a lovely gold. This chief stands up to the competition by standing up tall through the winter months. Use as a specimen plant, naturalizing, or in a border. The plumes look great in arrangements.

As the Chief vacates the runway, the crowd begins to buzz. Who’s going to win? You’ll vote when you purchase a plant. Who knows? Maybe they can all be winners!

About the author:

Stephanie Cohen is known as The Perennial Diva, and after reading, you can see why. If you love her sense of humor and enthusiasm for plants as much as I do, definitely check out The Nonstop Garden, published by Timber Press. It’s beautifully illustrated and photographed, and my copy is well-worn and thoroughly underlined, not only from the great information she shares, but from all the one-liners that I didn’t want to forget! Read my review here.

Photo credit: Flickr

When the Garden Designers Roundtable chose Top Landscape Plants as this month’s topic, I thought to myself, “Hey, no problem, I can write that in my sleep.” I mean, enthusing about plants is kind of my thing, you know?

But given that this is book excerpt week here at North Coast Gardening, I thought it’d be fun to hand over the stage to five favorite writers, and let them enthuse for me. While each writer comes to plants from a different perspective, they share a love of gardening and language that makes each a pleasure to read.

Without further ado, here are five of my top landscape plants:

Borage (Borago officianalis)

From The Edible Front Yard by Ivette Soler:

“If, while strolling through a garden, you see little blue shooting stars exploding over a fountain of fuzzy leaves, you have stumbled upon borage. The luminous clusters of pinky-purple buds start off pendulous, then rear up and make themselves known with a burst of color. The edible grayish-green fuzzy leaves and stems of borage are a wonderful foil for darker foliage in the garden.”

While borage is a rampant self-sower in my climate, the cheerful blue blossoms attract honeybees and a number of other pollinators. This makes it a joy to photograph, since there’s always a bumbling somebody ambling along, ready for their close-up.

Fuchsia (Fuchsia magellanica)

From The Food-Lover’s Garden by Mark Diacono:

“I have never been a great fan of fuchsias to look at. They remind me of the gardens of the retirement homes I walked past on my way to school, and I loathe their gaudy red/purple flowers. It took me a long time to allow the possibility of growing one, it really did, but I kept finding the odd reference to them being delicious if you could lay your hands on the right varieties. So buy one I did.

. . . their flavor is so very special, with suggestions of kiwifruit, plum, and sweet grapes, as well as a gentle edge of pepper that comes along near the end.”

While I don’t share Mark’s abhorrence of the fuchsia flower (I’d call them deliciously flamboyant, not gaudy!), I do share his adoration of fuchsia berries. In an organic garden, you can feel safe eating the berries of Fuchsia magellanica, a 6′ x 6′ shade-loving shrub that comes with either the traditional magenta and purple flower or a gentle lilac-colored flower, with foliage in green, gold- or cream-variegated. Mark has a recipe for fuchsia fruit roll-up that’s perfect for people like me, who have grown up in body but not necessarily in spirit.

Hellebore (Helleborus orientalis)

From Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart:

“Low-growing perennials produce dramatic, dark green foliage and beautiful five-petaled blossoms in shades of pale green, white, pink, red, and maroon that appear in winter and early spring. All parts of the plant are poisonous. The sap is irritating to the skin, and symptoms of ingestion include burning of the mouth, vomiting, dizziness, nervous system depression, and convulsions.

The First Sacred War (595-585 BC) is believed by some historians to have been won after a Greek military alliance poisoned the water supply of the city of Kirrha with hellebore. This would have been one of the first instances of chemical warfare in history.”

Well, if all that hasn’t put you off of hellebore as a garden plant, may I point out that it is also low-maintenance, deer-resistant, tolerant of shady locations, and blooms at a time of year when little else is going on? And that the leathery leaves are of such a texture that nobody in their right mind would chew on them? And that breeders have come up with new varieties in shades of apricot, yellow-with-speckles, and metallic blue-black, among others? Really. It’s a very nice plant.

Hardy Stonecrop (Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’)

From Mrs. Greenthumbs by Cassandra Danz:

“Sedum, that bastion of the dry sun-drenched garden, is also very accommodating in dry shade. Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, with its grayish fleshy leaves and deep red flowers, has a lot of style, and no garden should be without it. Trouble is, this sedum is so popular, practically no garden is without it! But even though they may not be exotic, drifts of sedum are a welcome sight in September.”

Thank you Cassandra, for pointing out that just because a plant is common, is no reason to shun it. Heaven forefend you should end up with a plant that grows lusciously, has a long season of bloom, and is nearly trouble-free. Which, let’s face it, when a place has all of those fine qualities, it generally becomes popular in short order.

Let’s get rid of garden snobbery and just commit to doing new and interesting things with some of these tried-and-true favorites.

Hook Sedge (Uncinia uncinata)

From Fearless Color Gardens by Keeyla Meadows:

“Orange offers that special adventure of versatility. Orange can be very modern. Orange can be that comic book blast of “pow!” It can be a sublime chorus of the devoted, standing at the shore at sunset, receiving the day’s last rays. Orange is an orangutan of a color, swinging from the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to the edgy explorations of the artistically inclined.”

Whenever I’m bored with thinking about or writing about plants, I pick up Keeyla Meadow’s book on color and just let her words wash over me. She IS fearless, and her bold take on color is generally just what I need to shake off any garden doldrums and get that new-gardener’s sense of awe and excitement back.

On to Uncinia: this easy grower is the ultimate Halloween plant. Orange all year, with black blooms in September that hang on through Halloween and make a fun foil to any black flowers you care to cultivate nearby. It has a simple dignity most of the year, but is unafraid of the spotlight; I think Keeyla would approve.

Where do you find plant inspiration? Let me know in the comments below!

And be sure to check out my fellow designers’ posts in this month’s Garden Designers Roundtable:

Nan Ondra : Hayefield : Bucks County, PA

Andrew Keys : Garden Smackdown : Boston, MA

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

Ivette Soler : The Germinatrix : Los Angeles, CA

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Laura Livengood Schaub : Interleafings : San Jose, CA

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In the Garden : Los Altos, CA

Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

These two plants are easy to grow and take little care to look their best. Variegated Dwarf Weigela, Weigela florida ‘Variegata Nana’, is a sturdy shrub to about 4′ tall and wide. It loses its leaves in winter, but comes back with fresh growth and masses of flowers each spring.

Clifford Moor Red Catchfly, Silene ‘Clifford Moor’, is a softly-textured perennial with a clump of foliage that reaches about 1 foot tall and 2 feet around. The airy flowering stems are held a foot above the foliage, and it blooms off and on spring through fall. The basal clump of foliage is evergreen in my Zone 9 climate.

Both plants were photographed on the same day in early May, and they both share a lovely golden variegation, soft texture and similar shape to their leaves, and both flower pink in spring. Full sun to partial shade will make both plants happy.

If you’re looking to add a feeling of continuity to your garden by using repetition, but don’t want to use too many of the exact same plant, consider using this concept of color echoes to find plant combinations that will give the feeling of repeated themes, without actual repetition.

Like the barely-fragrant Stinking Hellebore, Gaultheria (formerly Pernettya) mucronata has been given a somewhat undeserved and unfortunate common name, probably by some delicate-skinned maiden who’d never heard of gardening gloves. Prickly Heath is only a bit poky at the leaf tips, but anyone wearing decent gloves won’t really notice. Of course, it’s possible my tolerance for prickles has been warped by years of getting rose thorns stuck in my neck while pruning, so take that for what it’s worth.

Anyway, it’s a lovely plant, with berries that come in a range of colors from white, pink, magenta, or red. The berries look fantastic against the tiny dark green leaves and bright white bell-shaped flowers, and the ones I have planted here on the coast have bloomed and berried nearly year-round, with a particularly fresh set of berries in winter.

The Sunset Western Garden Book says that you can increase your fruit production by having multiple varieties, but I’ve grown a number of them without a pollinator nearby and gotten loads of berries (see the photos).

Our local birds seem disinterested in the berries, but the bees and pollinators certainly enjoy the little bell-shaped flowers, which remind me of Huckleberry or Salal blooms. The UBC Botanical Garden reports that the berries may be edible (people in Chile, where the plant is from, are said to have eaten it as a staple), but says their flavor isn’t anything to write home about, so why bother? “Mealy and watery” doesn’t sound particularly appetizing to me.

Prickly Heaths get about 3 feet tall and 4 feet wide, and spread politely by suckering. This is only a problem if you are using landscape fabric, in which case I’d cut out a 4 to 5 foot hole for them. I think of their suckering as a good thing, since it allows you to easily split off a few pups each year to use elsewhere in the garden.

They’re hardy in USDA Zones 7-9 and are deer-resistant. They prefer part shade and cool, acid soil with a lot of mulch, so make great companions to Rhododendrons and Azaleas.

Have you grown Gaultheria mucronata? Let me know your experiences in the comments below.

This sweet little groundcover looks simple and refined when not in bloom, like a larger-leaved, deeper-green version of Baby’s Tears. But once it comes into bloom, it is a serious showstopper, with red hairy bracts holding disproportionately large fuchsia blooms. It flowers during the entire growing season, spring to fall, and the cheery red bracts persist even after the petals fall off.

It makes a vigorous carpet wherever it gets water. Gardens that are watered by hand or by overhead sprinkler soon end up with Spanish Shawl filling every bit of available space, while in gardens where it is watered more sparingly with drip irrigation, it tends toward neat clumps. I find it easy to remove if it spreads beyond where I like it.

They’re great for part or full shade, USDA Zones 9-11, and they’re a relative of the Princess Flower, Tibouchina urvilleana. They definitely aren’t a xeric plant, but if you live in a rainy climate like mine and pop it in the shade, it doesn’t need too much summer water to look good. I love it in gardens where my clients specify they don’t want to see bark, because the Spanish Shawl fills in the blank spaces of the garden so nicely. The flowers go beautifully with the flowers of Razzleberri Fringe Flower (Loropetalum chinense ‘Monraz’).

The best part? After the first year or two you have a strong enough clump that it’s easy to give some to anyone who stops to admire it, which will be anybody either female or flamboyant enough to properly appreciate its vivid shade of fuchsia.

Want to see some of my other favorite plants?

Shamelessly Tropical: Hawt Plants for a Variety of Climates

Plants to Love: All the Profiles

I know you’re wondering, so let’s get this out of the way: it’s loo-kow-thow-ee. You only have to say the name once though, when you’re looking for it at the nursery, and then you can call it anything you like. “That gorgeous variegated thing” is what most people call it. Andrew of Garden Smackdown suggests “Lew”.

Whatever. It’s low-maintenance, very deer-resistant, and seems to be happy in a wide range of light conditions from full sun to shade as long as it’s given regular water, acid soil, and a thick layer of mulch to keep its roots cool.

It’s hardy in USDA Zones 5-9 and gets about 3-5 feet tall. I’ve seen suggestions that you can keep it pruned to as low as 18″ (they do spring back fine from hard pruning), but to me the nicest thing about this plant is that loosely drooping habit. You want something you can shear, get a boxwood, ya know?

I think it looks best with other woodland plants, or Japanese plants like Cryptomeria and Japanese Maples (you can see it above with ‘Rozanne’ Hardy Cranesbill and ‘Villa Taranto’ Japanese Maple).

Have you planted Rainbow Leucothoe? What do you pair it with?

This low-maintenance perennial forms a slowly spreading mat of thick green foliage, and at the end of summer bursts into bloom with a multi-colored show. The buds start out pale pink and fade to deep rose, eventually turning a rich rusty brown for fall.

The foliage too gives a fall show, getting a bronzey-red tone as the weather cools. Persicaria ‘Dimity’ spreads persistently but not invasively in my coastal Pacific Northwest climate, and the foliage forms such a thick mat that even if dogs try to dig or kids tromp through it, ‘Dimity’ holds up fine and looks good.

I find it looks best in part sun with regular water and decent drainage. In too much sunshine, the flowers tend to die back quicker and the foliage looks less lush, while in shade it just doesn’t bloom much. That said, it’s such a tough plant that it can take a variety of conditions.

I’ve heard reports of deer-resistance because Persicarias have oxalic acid in their leaves, which deer find un-tasty, but I would test that theory in your garden before buying a ton of them. Persicaria ‘Dimity’ thrives in USDA Zones 5-9, possibly as low as 3. They get about 18″ tall and 3′ wide, though mine have spread slightly wider with age.

If the invasive Persicarias have turned you off to this genus, I’d urge you to look again at Persicaria affinis varieties. They’ve had the honor of being part of the Blooms of Bressingham line and have won the RHS Award of Garden Merit.

And look at them! They’re super-tough and they’re just plain cute.

‘Snowmound’ Spirea (USDA Zones 4-9) is a lovely thing, with deep green leaves, reddish stems, a graceful arching habit and rounded form. It loses its leaves, but doesn’t make a mess about it, and the white flowers in spring make you forget that you missed it all winter.

‘ Snowmound’ needs full sun to do its best, but is otherwise fairly unfussy, getting to 5’ or more in time without pruning (I usually keep mine pruned to about 4.5’ with great results). The deer seem to leave it alone, but deer vary everywhere, so plant with caution.

After it blooms, it shoots out with a lot of new foliage growth that doesn’t really do much for me (it’s kind of a messy shape), so I cut the biggest stems out in June or so to keep the plant from getting to an unruly size. If the plant’s still larger than I’d like, I selectively prune out a few older branches throughout the shrub, taking the stems down beneath the rest of the foliage so you can’t see any cut stems. Those cut stems will often regenerate with fresh new growth.

I like ‘Snowmound’ with Hebe ‘Wiri Blush’, Loropetalum ‘Razzleberri’, and other dignified plants that have a neat habit and some showy color. Spirea ‘Snowmound’ has a very similar tone of foliage to Chondropetalum tectorum, the evergreen Cape Rush, so they look good within the same garden areas to repeat the color but bring a different shape to things.

New Zealand Wind Grass is a stunning low-maintenance grass that keeps its glowing orange foliage all winter long. I occasionally have to prune out some dead bits here or there, which I do by grasping a small clump of dead foliage and cutting it out at the base so you don’t notice it’s been pruned.

Anemanthele lessoniana gets to 4’ around and 3’ tall, and will take even the worst seacoast wind. It’s also deer-resistant. It colors up all bronzey-orange in full sun, but is an attractive green grass in part shade as well. They’re gorgeous for highlighting any kind of green foliage, and I think they look great with plants that have purple flowers like Tibouchina/ Princess Flower or Salvia leucantha/ Mexican Bush Sage.

Geranium ‘Rozanne’ (USDA Zones 4/5-9) is a lovely tumbling plant that gets between 4 and 5’ around, and about 2’ tall. She’s been the darling of the landscape designer crowd since being introduced a few years back, and even though we all plant her all the time, we’re sticking our fingers in our ears and going “LA-LA-LA” whenever a whisper of her being over-used comes up. She’s only over-used once we’re tired of her, and we are not.

She loves full sun and is somewhat deer-resistant, though not reliably so. ‘Rozanne’ even tolerates strong seacoast wind without looking shabby. If you put ‘Rozanne’ in a part shade spot, she’ll still grow and bloom nicely, but she may get a bit leggy and sprawl out more. She does go dormant, so I often plant her with evergreen plants so she doesn’t leave too big of a hole in the winter garden.

I like her with ornamental grasses like the Acorus ‘Ogon’/ Golden Sweet Flag grass above. She also harmonizes nicely with Roses, Rhododendrons, and Heathers.

Learn how to prune Geranium ‘Rozanne’ here (link to video). I gently lift one side of the plant up and trim out some of the longest stems that are flopping on the ground either back to a side shoot or all the way back, making sure my pruning cuts are hidden by the rest of the foliage, and work my way around the base of the plant to even it up. This helps to reduce size or get the plant out of a pathway if needed, because usually the longest stems are the ones sitting on the ground.

After you prune, the goal is to have the plant smaller, but not see any visible sign that you pruned it – no cut stems or bare patches.

Want to join in the Rozanne lovefest? Check out Susan Morrison’s post about her here.