Plants that Work

This year in my garden I'm going to focus on plants that work. Sometimes when planting season comes around, as a gardener, you want to take a few risks and try some things you haven't tried before. But other times maybe money is a little tight or you don't have a lot of room to mess around with, so you want to just stick with the sure thing — the tried and true.

A plant that is hardy is one that will survive an average winter in a given climate. A perennial plant is one that will return year after year to continue its growth cycle. To establish a long-lasting garden that requires less work, it's a good idea to focus on hardy perennials. Other considerations are possible uses for the plant in question, as well as just how nice they look once they're planted.

If you're focusing on looks over uses, you might want to know how each plant will look during each season. You don't want to choose only plants that look good in one season. It's easy to have a garden that looks great in the spring when almost everything is flowering, but harder to design a bed to look good in the fall and winter.

Here are a few useful, reliable plants that have worked well in my garden. Chances are if you're in the Northeast Oklahoma area, they will work for you too.

Sage — Cooks know sage is great to have in the kitchen, but the herb is undervalued as an ornamental plant in the garden. For one thing, there are a large variety of colors available, including purple, golden, varigated, two-toned and tricolor sages. The flowers can be pink or blue, and attract wildlife. In Oklahoma, sage is simple to grow as a transplant. I think my sage plant is about three years old at this point, and needs dividing. It will mound up from year to year, eventually growing strong enough to stay leafy through the winter.

Phlox — There are several varieties of phlox to choose from. I grow two kinds, one called creeping phlox, which mounds close to the ground, and the other I call "standing phlox," which grows upright and adds a good element of height to my flowerbed. Both have the same clusters of small pinkish-purple flowers, but other color varieties are easily available. They're hard workers in the garden, propagating themselves easily, low maintenance, and providing a lot of long-lasting colors. They are not native to this area as many of these other plants are, but instead come from the alpine tundra regions of Europe and East Asia.

(Above: One of many varieties of phlox. This one creeps, but others stand upright)

Rosemary and lavender — These herbs are very similar to the untrained eye. Lavender resembles a silvery version of rosemary, as both have the same elongated, leathery leaves that remind me of pine needles. When mature, rosemary will flower with small pink buds, but lavender is more well known for its blooms. Both plants are drought tolerant and can grow in poor soils. Depending on how you train them as they grow, these plants can sprawl out like ground cover or stay upright like a topiary.

Purple coneflower (echinacea) —Native tribes from the Great Plains used coneflower preparations to treat various sicknesses, and today medical studies have been done on echinacea to determine its efficacy at preventing or shortening the duration of the common cold. But in the Oklahoma garden, the purple coneflower is a performer. It's a low-maintenance plant whose many florets will attract butterflies, bees and other pollinators to your garden. In my garden, they appear to propagate themselves easily from year to year. They also tolerate being moved around (transplanted) to different sites within the same garden if you water them before and after.

Sunflowers — The first plants I ever grew from seed were sunflowers. I got a packet of 25, and sure enough I got 25 towering sunflowers by mid-summer. Sunflowers will grow almost anywhere, no matter how poor or even polluted the soil might be. Native to the Americas, the flower is also available in dwarf varieties that are roughly half the height of the usually 6- to 8-foot high plants. Some people choose to stake their sunflowers to prevent them from tipping over and uprooting. Although sunflowers can easily grow taller than you, their root systems are shallower than you might think.

(Above: Behold, my first attempt at planting from seeds! These baby sunflowers follow the sun even before their characteristic flowers appear)

English Ivy — A classic ornamental plant, Oklahoma offers the right conditions for English Ivy to flourish with very little effort from you. I planted a few little cuttings of ivy about three years ago in the hopes that it would one day cover up a chain-link fence on my property. Now a pretty long segment of the fence is covered in deep green ivy leaves, giving the yard a little better aesthetics. Sometimes you might have to weave the ivy vines through wherever it is you'd like them to grow. They can be guided by you. Aside from that, they are a low-maintenance plant.


Prairie Blazingstar — Another native plant, the prairie blazingstar is a plant people will ask about. It's a tall, unique-looking flowering plant with thick stems that support oblong flowerheads that remind me of cattails with flowers on them. These plants can be difficult to introduce at first, preferring moist soil, but once they are established they will return. They are excellent for attracting pollinators to your garden.

(Above: The prairie blazingstar looks almost prehistoric to me, but is a flower native to the Great Plains)

Clematis vine — A woody climbing vine, clematis was an idea I got from my mom because they did well in her yard. I had to be a little patient with the vine, as it grew only a little bit (it seemed) each season, but it always comes back. The flowers are star-like and gorgeous, and can be bought in a few different colors. One thing: You have to be careful never to cut clematis vines no matter what time of year it is. No matter how dead they look, they WILL spring back to life.

Purple Poppymallow (aka: wine cups) — The poppymallow is a prairie plant that I've spotted in the wild before. They like hot and dry conditions, so they're easy to keep alive in the summer. They tend to crawl around and send up wide-mouthed flowers that look like goblets. Make sure you don't mistake the plant for a weed as its leaves resemble the Carolina geranium — a common weed around these parts. The poppymallow grows from a taproot, which is edible and was used as a food source by settlers to the Great Plains area.

(Above: The poppymallow flower, also known as wine cups)

Black-eyed Susan — There are dozens of flowers that people around here refer to as Black-eyed Susans. It was probably the first flower I ever learned about. Since they grow around this area as weeds, you can probably guess that they are easy to introduce into your garden. And because they are often found as weeds, it seems silly to pay for them. Just grab some from a nearby field and transplant them. Works for me. I'm not sure if these plants are annuals or perennials, but they have returned to my garden bigger each year.

Lamb's Ears — Easy to grow in a variety of sun conditions, the lamb's ear is so easy to grow it's practically a weed. Native to Turkey and Iran, this plant is named for its resemblance to the ears of sheep. You might consider these plants as a novel alternative to the silver-colored dusty miller. I don't see lamb's ear in gardens as often as those.

Nasturtium — An incredibly useful plant, nasturtium is not only edible and pretty, but it serves other purposes as well. They make great companion plants in beds, and are often employed in kitchen gardens. They pair particularly well with squashes, broccoli, melons, cucumbers and others. They grow readily from seeds and can be harvested as microgreens for a tasty salad. The plant will also draw pests away from your more valuable plants.