From a visual and horticulture perspective, gardens with a wider variety of plants that bloom at different times ensure you have something blooming in every season. Plants of varying sizes, shapes, and textures also lend interest to a garden’s visual appeal and allow the homeowner’s personality, interests, and even design style to really shine.
Whether you are starting out from scratch or looking to give your home garden a gentle uplift, we have compiled a comprehensive list of 15 types of plants every gardener must have to create a showstopping garden filled with pretty blooms and greenery.
Herbaceous Perennials
Peppering your garden with hardier, herbaceous perennials that have non-woody stems and produce blooms within a year. Ruby wine achillea, agastaches, white nicotiana, Japanese anemone, begonias, hostas, and sedum are bright, textural blooms that can live for years under normal growing conditions, blooming every spring.
Annual Blooms
Annual plants add vibrancy, excitement, and much-needed pops of colour and interest that instantly brighten up your house garden. Putting on a show as a seasonal highlight, zinnias, dahlias, pelargoniums, cosmos, shaggy dwarf morning glory, marigolds, larkspur, and snapdragons are just a few stunners to choose from.
Herb Parterre
A must-have for a rich garden, herbs are considerably easy to grow and care for. If you are looking to grow different herbs, consider a symmetrical herb parterre with small quadrants of hedged squares to fill with different herbs. Sage, English lavender, chives, rosemary, thyme, chocolate mint, and basil are delicious, multifunctional herbs to add to your garden collection.
Climbing and Trailing Plants
Incorporating climbers and vines into your home garden can seem daunting, but they can be trained and coaxed across trellises, pergolas, trees, archways, and more to give a romantic, fuller amid your home garden plants. Bougainvillea, English Ivy, Mandeville, clematis, honeysuckle, chocolate vine, creeping jasmine, and sweet potato vibe leave behind graceful trails that complete the dreamy aesthetic for your garden.
Ground Covers
From evergreen ground covers to hardy perennials and low-growing shrubs, ground covers provide foliage across your house garden throughout the year. Filling in the gaps with plants of different heights and shapes adds textural interest to a garden space. Japanese spurge and painted ferns, heucheras, European wild ginger, coral bells, creeping thyme and juniper, or even blue daisies add depth to the setting.
Ornamental Trees
Ornamental trees add a natural focal point to your house garden, creating instant verticality and grandeur. They also serve as shady canopies and create a sense of privacy. Popular ornamental trees include dogwood, mountain ash, crape myrtle, and maples, among others.
Fruiting Trees
Bringing seasonal fruit and all-year-round interest, fruit plants for a home garden are becoming increasingly popular as many continue to embrace sustainability, organic living, and eco-conscious practices. Smaller fruiting plants can accentuate your garden setting such as a leafy dwarf peach tree or or a vibrantly-hued Meyer lemon tree.
Stunning Shrubs
Available in a variety of shapes, sizes, and patterns, evergreen shrubs are incredibly versatile and can act as natural privacy screens. Besides enhancing the landscape, they can also blend in to block any unsightly sections of your garden, offer shade as needed for other plants, and even be shaped to fit the look you want for your home garden.
Studded Succulents
Throw in a bit of whimsy and character to your home garden with cold-hardy succulents. Depending on the region, you can choose from thousands of succulent varieties in all shapes and sizes, such as agave, aloe vera, portulaca, or even peanut cactus.
Various Veggies
Embrace the farm-to-table sustainability practice and add a few fresh veggies to your backyard plant garden. Green peas, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, okra, carrots and even chilli peppers are wonderfully easy-produce plants that grow well in raised or in-ground beds or containers in both the backyard or even decks and patios.
Shady Palms
The rustle and curving shadows of palm fronds add a calming, sensory vibe to your garden, making them extremely popular garden plants for every landscape. Consider adding pindo palms, Mexican blue palms, areca, adonia, or kentia to your garden for a subtle tropical touch.
Fragrant Foliage
Accentuate the verdant visuals of your home garden with an additional layer of richness through fragrance. For a light touch, place scented plants along the walkway, near the front or back door, or even along a window or two to release their aroma whenever you brush by. Pelargonium tomentosum, lavender, Korean spice viburnum, eucalyptus and lemon balm make fantastic fragrant additions to the garden.
Statement Blooms
Statement flowers are where you really get to showcase your personality in your house garden. Create floral focal points in your garden with beautiful flowering plants that are truly unique and hard to ignore. Play around with different colours, shapes, and textures to add the characters you want to star in your setting, like birds of paradise, mauvy delphinium, amber-hued poppies, or shade-loving Solomon’s seal.
Gorgeous Grass
Add accents of flowing grass to your garden, such as feather reed, little bluestem, salvia, purple millet, Japanese forest grass, or helenium ‘Mardi gras’ for wispy movement, texture, and colour.
Herbal And Medicinal Plants
There’s nothing quite like stepping into your garden to grab some fresh, ripe veggies, quickly snip a couple of fragrant herbs, and handpick some leaves from your array of medicinal plants to fend off that pesky cold. To truly complete your garden’s form, style, and function, add a couple of medicinal plants to your garden. Calendula, peppermint, tulsi, chamomile, garlic, and yarrow are simple medicinal plants to grow.
Don’t Miss Out!
| Winter Flowering Plants | Beautiful Winter Flowers That Grow in Cold Season |
| Money Plant Chinese | Chinese Money Plant Care |
| Decorating With Plants | Creative Ways to Showcase Houseplants in Your Decor |
| Jade Plant Guide | The Ultimate Jade Plant Guide and Care Tips |
| Poinsettia Plant Care Tips | A Guide to Keeping Your Poinsettia Plant Thriving |
Add Another Level Of Joy To Your Garden
Whether you just discovered you have a green thumb or are an avid gardener looking to expand your pasture, there are many things to consider when planning and designing a home garden. To help you bring together the right mix of colours, textures, and greenery, design experts can assist in assessing the space and making your perfect garden vision a reality.
From scale and structure to harmony, charm and history, the right expertise can build your garden so that you can proudly watch it grow with joy for years to come.
Want some more easy home gardening and beautiful home plant ideas to create the perfect garden? Get in touch with our experts at the Interior Company, transforming gorgeous spaces that draw from nature, personality, and function to build your perfect home.
*Images used are for illustration purposes only. Interior Company does not hold any copyright to the images unless mentioned explicitly.