13 Easy Care Plants

Tough comes in a pretty package with English lavender. This Mediterranean herb packs perfume into blossoms and silvery leaves. English lavender can form a fragrant hedge. In smaller gardens, try a compact variety, like ‘Munstead’ or ‘Thumbelina Leigh.’

Late season color is what you get when you add deer-resistant lion’s tail to your garden. Deep orange flowers, which resemble small fuzzy balls, debut in fall. In frost-free zones, this is a towering shrubby perennial, soaring to 4 to 8 feet. In areas with frost, it performs like a perennial, topping out at 4 feet and dying to the ground for winter. Pair it with English lavender for an eye-catching combination.

This rugged rudbeckia is a stunner, opening bicolor blooms from midsummer to frost. Big flowers measure 6 to 8 inches across and feature brown centers surrounded with a red-brown halo and gold petals. Stems are sturdy—this is a must for cutting gardens.

Colorful and carefree, loropetalum takes gardens up a notch with its contemporary weeping form and dark burgundy evergreen leaves. Pink flowers appear in spring. It’s a small shrub, growing 1 to 2 feet high. Use it in a planting bed, or tuck it into a 2-foot or taller container to showcase its weeping style. Loropetalum is pest-free and drought tolerant.