Multi-Season Plants for Northeast Gardens

Meet a blueberry bush that can easily pull double duty in the landscape as a hedge or walkway plant. Berries ripen in midsummer and offer an intensely sweet flavor similar to blueberry jelly. Leaves feature traditional blueberry coloring with red tints developing through summer into fall. Plants grow 1 to 2 feet tall and adapt easily to containers.

Growing the Northeast Garden, by Andrew Keys, with photography by Kerry Michaels, features the best shrubs, trees, perennials, vines, grasses and bulbs for the northeastern U.S. Gardening techniques in the book are based on the region's climate and soils.

Need a grass for wet soil? Check out ‘Karl Foerster’. This feather reed grass forms tight clumps 12 to 18 inches wide with leaves 3 to 5 feet tall. Seedheads emerge in early summer and take the plant height to 6 feet. Flower plumes start purple-green and ripen to gold in autumn. Hardy in Zones 5 to 9.

'Moonlight' (Schizophragma hydrangeoides) is a climbing hydrangea with silvery, bluish-green leaves that turn yellow in fall. In summer, clusters of creamy white flowers open. Reddish-brown stems add interest in winter.