15 Tall Perennial Flowers

Add height and color to your garden with these easy-to-grow flowers.

By: Leanne Potts and Debbie Wolfe

Related To:

Tall and Mighty

Growing tall flowers (we're talking at least 3' and as high as 9') can make your yard look stunning, but they can also serve as a living privacy fence or hide an ugly view. Lofty perennials can also make a dramatic backdrop to a garden that has plants with varying heights and colors. Here’s a list of common perennials to try in your yard.

Hardy Hibiscus

This towering shrub grows 7' to 9' tall, just as tall as an ornamental tree. Its flowers can grow up to 12" wide and come in gorgeous shades of red, pink and white. The only thing this giant has in common with its fragile, tropical kin is its exotic-looking blooms. It can survive winters as far north as Zone 5.

Learn More: How to Plant and Care for Hibiscus Flower

Oriental Lily

These hardy beauties grow 4' to 6' tall and burst with big, showy flowers in white, red and pink. They smell sweet and are great for cutting gardens, clip a few blooms for bouquets and flower arrangements.

Learn More: All About Lilies

Delphinium

These old-fashioned, soaring flowers produce spikes of blooms in color-saturated tones of blue, pink, purple and white. The biggest varieties can reach 6' tall.

Learn More: 13 Popular Purple Flowering Perennials

Joe Pye Weed

Butterflies love these tall perennial plants and you will too if you’re looking to go big. Joe Pye grows up to 7' tall and 4' wide. It bears clusters of pale pink-purple flowers that smell like vanilla.

Learn More: How to Create a Butterfly Garden

Cutleaf Coneflower

The cutleaf is not a coneflower at all. It’s in the same family as black-eyed Susans. It can grow to a towering 9' tall and is covered with yellow, daisy-like flowers with coneflower-like drooping petals and domed center disks.

Learn More: Coneflower Explosion: New and Unusual Varieties

Hollyhock

A staple of cottage gardens, hollyhock will bring old-fashioned beauty to your perennial border. Hollyhocks produce blooms in hot pink, red, white or black on 6' to 8' tall spires. Technically it’s a biennial, but it self-sows and multiplies, so you shouldn’t need to replant.

Learn More: Growing Hollyhocks: Hollyhock Varieties and Care

Canna

Cannas look tropical, but they’re winter hardy to Zone 7. These perennial flowers can reach as high as 6' with big, paddle-shaped leaves and blooms in red, orange, yellow, cream and multi-color.

Learn More: How to Use Canna Lily in the Garden

Maximillian Sunflower

These look like their annual cousins, but they bloom in late summer and keep making flowers in the fall. Maximillian sunflowers grow 4' to 7' tall and produce branches full of sunny yellow flowers.

Learn More: Tall and Tiny Sunflower Varieties

Red Hot Poker

This exotic looking plant grows 3' to 4' tall and works well in groupings or in the back of a perennial bed. Spikes of red, yellow, white or orange tube-shaped flowers grow from grassy, gray-green foliage.

Learn More: 23 Perennials for Full Sun

Foxglove

The tall spires of foxgloves are a vision. They grow as tall as 8' and produce tube-shaped flowers in blue, pink or white with deep purple spots on their throats. Technically they’re biennials, meaning they’ll live two years and die. But they’re enthusiastic re-seeders and will act like tall perennial plants, coming back for years.

Learn More: 11 Foxglove Varieties to Try

Boltonia

Also known as false chamomile, Boltania grows 5' to 6' tall and has tiny, daisy-like blooms. These hardy flowers tolerate a wide range of soils including moderately dry ones. They make a lovely backdrop for border gardens.

Learn More: 13 Colorful Perennials for Big Impact

Globe Thistles

Featuring grayish-blue blooms, Globe Thistles generally grow from 2' to 4' and thrive when grown in Zones 3-8. It's a sturdy and attractive flower that grows in dense clumps, making it a striking ornamental accent to any flower bed.

Learn More: 13 Fabulous Flowers for Drying

Monkshood

Also known as Aconitum or Wolf's Bane, this purple-flowered, cool-weather-lover starts opening buds as frost approaches and keeps blooming through light frosts. It will reach a height of 3' to 5' at maturity and spreads to 1-1/2'. It's also deer and rabbit resistant.

Learn More: Long-Lived Perennials

Helenium

Its common name is Sneezeweed, but this beauty isn't a run-of-the-mill garden weed. It's a native perennial that features blooms in shades of red and orange starting in midsummer and extending well into fall. It can grow up to 3' to 5' making it a nice addition to a border garden.

Learn More: Best Perennials for Fall

Chimney Bellflower

This variety of campanula can grow up to over 5' tall. it features bell-shaped purple blooms that grow in a chimney-shaped stalk. It blooms over a long period — mid-summer through fall and tolerates a wide variety of conditions.

Learn More: 13 Low-Maintenance Perennials